


Broken Folk

by rushedwords



Series: Dog Tags & Rings [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, trying to fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:13:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2518745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushedwords/pseuds/rushedwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been almost five years apart with McCoy on Earth and Jim on Enterprise, and almost just as long since the two have been in the same place for any length of time. But when Enterprise goes missing near Romulan Space, McCoy is willing to do whatever he has to in order to find Jim. A self-contained sequel to The Last Two Tours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Desperate But Not Bold

**Unknown Planet – September 2272**  
The purplish sun was setting for the day when he heard it. Or at least when he thought he heard it. That quiet beep echoing through the vast desert plateau shaking him from a nice dream that he couldn’t quite hold onto. (He never could keep the good ones.) It took too much energy to pull himself into a standing position, his muscles shaking as insisted on moving toward that sound. And he was awake now, so he couldn’t just lie there.  
  
Jim Kirk knew he was going to die. It was only a matter of days now (and maybe not even that long). Rather than fear, there had been a false sense of peace and hopefulness at least in the simple thought that it would be over soon. Then there was that damn beep again like the ping of the radar when something came into range. There was every possibility that it was just his mind messing with him, but it might just be the shuttle’s radar. And if he were to die, it would be better to die by the shuttle rather than in his sad little rock shelter. Running on empty and powered by something he vaguely remembered as hope, but felt more like annoyance, he stumbled back toward the crash site.   
  
At the very least in a generation or two when some eager ensign came across his remains they might be able to identify the lost body of Captain James Tiberius Kirk, USS Enterprise. But even that was too optimistic for his soggy brain. The more likely reality was that he was just going to waste away to nothing but his bones. (And at least that thought merited a hollow laugh from his cracked lips.) Although there was the possibility that Starfleet would still use his likeliness for the recruitment videos, but that would always be the Jim Kirk who saved Earth and avenged his father’s death nearly fifteen years ago ignoring the bulk of his career and not the man he had become or even truly was. That man would be forgotten.   
  
Each footfall became heavier, his bones like lead sinking further into the scorched ground. All he wanted to do was sleep and never wake up, but the continuous beeping compelled him to keep going just a little bit further.   
  
With a sigh that sounded more like a death moan his legs finally gave out from under him. The beeping was still there, steadier now like the monitors in sickbay. Maybe if he closed his eyes he could hear Bones too.   
  
“But there’s no one else, kid. Hasn’t been anyone else in a while and I don’t think there will be ever.” The voice was just as solemn as had it been all of those years before, but not without traces of hope. “Think you could handle coming home to us?” It was so entirely Bones, saying so much in so few words.   
  
At least if went out with those words in his mind it would be okay.   
  
  
 **San Francisco - September 2268**  
Jim showed up two days after the data packet from their lawyer. And if McCoy didn't have needy medical students or dying populations to save from Topaline Sickness, he might have spent the past two days in a constant state of inebriation. Instead, he spent the past two days with less than four hours of sleep and an overabundance of work to keep him busy. It was a different sort of vice, but at least Starfleet and the hospital didn't frown it so readily.  
  
For once Jim didn’t just let himself in even if he could because technically these were his quarters too, but he rang the bell. McCoy wasn’t expecting company because it was a Tuesday, Joanna had class and Reynolds was doing whatever she did when she wasn’t keeping his life in order and really that was the only sort of company he received at the apartment. In fact, he had just arrived there from his office with the intent to increase the number of hours of sleep to a solid six.   
  
Not for the first time McCoy wished that he had doors with hinges that slammed shut. Had Jim been three days earlier that gut reaction to seeing him standing there would have been the exact opposite. For as much space as they had put between each other, clinging to their issues and pride, they would always be wrapped up in each other, snarled right down to the core. And at the end of the day that was the difficult part now that they had walked away from each other.   
  
“Did you request these?” Jim shoved the PADD with the data packet from the lawyer into McCoy’s hands. “Because I didn’t.”  
  
(They didn’t say hello, because saying hello would imply that they had time to say goodbye, when all they did was run, leaving behind a note and a heavy heart.)  
  
"Fuck, Jim.” He sighed and stepped aside to let the other man in. As much as he didn’t want to do this right now, he would rather not have this conversation in the hallway. “I signed these once."  
  
He was tired, but looking at Jim he could see the other man was tired too. And because he had no other way to deal with this, he went over to cupboard and poured two drinks. It was better than acknowledging the look on Jim’s face because he didn’t know if he wanted anger or something that wasn’t quite happy, but similar to it.   
  
"I know,” his voiced cracked. It was thick with emotion and his usual syntax disturbed with a pregnant pause. “Len, I never wanted you to have to sign them again."  
  
McCoy was not sure if he felt relieved or pissed off because it was a little too late. "Well, that's just great because here we are." McCoy pressed his eyes closed and threw back the rocker of high quality whiskey and took a sip from the next glass. He wanted it to end there. But hell, Enterprise would be shipping off in a few weeks, and this might be the only chance he got for the next five years. "You just left, Jim."  
  
They both knew that was a lie, but at the very least it was a place to start.   
  
Jim sighed, but didn’t immediately say anything. Instead he took the now empty rocker from Bones and walked over to the bar to pour himself a drink. Although he had never been in this apartment before Jim had no trouble acting like this was something he did every day (and maybe it should have been). He wasn’t going to get drunk, but at least whiskey would be a burn he could control.   
  
Back still turned from Bones he started. “We both know that it was over a long time before the tour ended.” He raised the glass to take a sip. His shoulders relaxed as the single malt liquor raced down his throat, giving him something other than the twisting in his stomach to focus on. “It…you used to be like a shower with real water after a long day, but then after… you know, it started to feel empty.” Glass in hand he turned around, not sure if he wanted to see the other man, but they were here now and he wasn’t going to run (yet). “Len, I was empty for so long, I was going to do anything to feel full again.”  
  
The comment wasn’t supposed to spark laughter, but it did. That dry empty sort of laughter that always put Jim on edge. At least it was easy to guess what came next from that sound that had become too familiar over the past couple of years. “Like Janice?” It was two mere words filled with dozens of unspoken implications between them.   
  
“Yes, like Janice.” Jim was surprised as how sure his voice sounded, but more so that he didn’t immediately snap to go on the defensive. By this point he knew that Janice was mistake, but she was his to make just like all the others he made. “She gave me what you couldn’t.”  
  
“What’s that a warm hole and perfect compliance?” The words came before he really had time to stop them because McCoy didn’t really mean them. He liked Janice just fine. It wasn’t her fault that she caught the attention of Jim Kirk. Or that she might have actually been able to give Jim what he couldn’t, and while it might be painful to admit part of him might be bitterly glad that someone could.   
  
Still, the words earned him a sharp glare from Jim that had made many a Romulan go running. “You know it wasn’t like that.” His voiced raised and there went the hope for discussing this like adults. But adults yelled, fought and threw around petty points while playing the ‘I am going to hurt you more than you can hurt me’ game. So, he would play too because it was clear Bones was.  
  
“Then what was it like, Jim?” The words were heated, but still in the false calm range he used when things would get dicey in sickbay. “You knew the rules going into this, knew it wasn’t going to be easy and fuck-” McCoy pressed his eyes closed, shaking his head. “Jim do you ever think with anything besides your goddamn dick?”  
  
They might as well be professionals at that game by now.   
  
“This coming from the man who is guilt ridden enough to appease all of the Jewish grandmothers and mothers in the history of existence?” This was a fight they easily should have had four years ago, but they were too careful then, things were too fragile. But now when everything was shot to hell? It was a no holds bar. “So, you messed up, we all mess up, the problem was you never moved on from it! You still carry Dramia around like it’s surgically attached to your back.”  
  
The sad part was that the mere mention of that planet still made McCoy freeze, his gut sinking to his feet. “I wiped out half the population.” He wasn’t yelling now, which was okay because Jim could yell enough for the both of them.  
  
“You didn’t do anything! You didn’t engineer the virus, you tried to stop it!” Maybe if he screamed it loud enough the truth would finally sink into that thick skull. “But before you could you were evacuated because it wasn’t safe for you to be there. So they named a plague after you, your research saved them in the end. Only you don’t see that part, you never did.” Jim paused long enough to shake his head, needing to catch his breath and take another drink. “You’re afraid, Bones, you’ve always been afraid, but after Dramia you stopped fighting that fear.”  
  
Maybe he was afraid, and maybe fear was fueling the anger boiling inside him. Only it wasn’t the sort of fear that Jim was talking about. This fear was the same fear he had been filled with since he returned to San Francisco. It was the fear that he went and mucked up the one good thing in his life after the divorce. (Fuck, he was going to have to start calling that the first divorce now.)  
  
“And you were always too busy with the ship who you always picked before me and I got that, fuck, I loved you for that because I am the same way, but when I needed you- in all those dark times…you stopped being able to look at me.” And wasn’t yelling anymore. McCoy didn’t want to yell anymore. What he really wanted was to simply fall into Jim’s arms and pretend like this fight was done and they could just slide back together again all sins forgiven. (Only it felt like this fight might be their last.) Really more than anything he just wanted to reach out and touch the man standing too far from him in their kitchen. “I was always willing to take whatever you could give me.”  
  
McCoy set his glass down, fighting the urge to start pacing. He needed to be a stone now because there things he needed to say. He kept his gaze focused on Jim’s feet because he knew looking into those blue eyes would finish all of his resolve because it had been too long. “And look I get it, it was easier for you to be alone then deal with my shit sometimes, but you forced that solitude on me,” said McCoy. “You didn’t give me a chance, you turned away and stopped fighting too.”  
  
For a brief moment his eyes flickered up to look at Jim. Here they were two fully-grown men and distinguished Starfleet officers looking and acting like petulant children.  
  
“I let you go, Bones.” Jim finished his glass off and set it down on the counter. “I let you go because you weren’t going to go on your own and you weren’t happy.”  
  
“Well maybe I didn’t want to be let go of!” McCoy was already closing the distance between them before the words were fully out of his mouth. It took a Jim a moment to react, but he did, meeting McCoy halfway between the sink and the table.  
  
It was a hard clamping of limbs and lips, fueled by desperation and requiem for something that possibly no longer existed. Their movements were sloppy, physically clamoring for dominance over an uneasy situation. They used to fall so easily into each other, now it was all awkward angles, bumped noses, and fingers unable to undo buttons. In some ways it felt a lot like the first time, but it was clear the foreplay was over. It was a miracle they even managed to stumble over to the sofa – because the bed was too far of a distance to traverse for this frantic disrobing.  
  
While the hands were familiar it all felt different.   
  
Each man tried to devour the other, hands becoming greedy and filled with a passion that they hadn’t experienced for a long time. It was limbs and teeth pressing hard enough to leave fast fading marks, but never enough to last longer than morning. Then it was a fumbling of hands over buttons and zippers not once slowing down. To slow down might allow a thought in the span of a breath that would stop this before there was anything more to regret.   
  
Clothes were lost in the course of minutes, thrown hastily to the floor with the need to fill the urge for more – more skin, more contact, and maybe even more love. (Although what they were spiraling into was not love, not really.)  
  
McCoy straddled Jim’s legs, his weight grounding the other man, but not looking him in the eyes. It was cowardice, but it was easier to pretend this was something else when he didn’t have to look at Jim. Rather than think, he just wanted to feel. He bent his head forward, mouth pressing hotly onto Jim’s chest, tracing invisible lines he created years ago, teeth pressing just to scrape the surface and hear Jim’s breath hitch.   
  
Jim had never been particularly vocal when it came to sex, at least not in words that the normal person could understand. Instead his sex language was moans and half-words caught in the back of his throat. It was something that McCoy had been proud of once, being able to reduce the normally verbose captain to the language capability of a caveman. Now, he was just grateful to not hear a litany of empty promises.  
  
The doctor paused in his work to lean back and witness the beauty of Jim unraveling under him and had to bite his tongue to not give utterance to his own litany. However, before he really had time to admire, Jim attempted to roll them over for his turn, but that didn’t go as planned.   
  
Well, at least McCoy assumed that Jim didn’t mean to roll them onto the carpeted floor with a loud thunk. And before McCoy even had a chance to think he was too damn old to be having sex on the floor Jim’s mouth was on his.   
  
The thing about sex with them was that it could be a lot like riding a bike. You never exactly forgot how, just sometimes you stumbled and wobbled a bit before you really got anywhere. And when they did it was worth a few bumps and scrapes along the way even if this was goodbye.   
  


***

  
Blinking into consciousness as his alarm went off the next morning, McCoy was immediately aware of three very important facts. He didn’t feel hung over. He was naked. And he was very much alone.   
  
Of the three, the last one probably hurt the most because for a few moments he wondered if the events of the past twelve hours had been nothing but an elaborate dream. (And worse, a part of him hoped they weren’t.)   
  
However, there was only so long where he could attempt to exist as Schrödinger’s cat.   
  
Pushing out of the bed, the pleasant stiffness in his body confirmed the dream as reality. Then that pleasant, sated feeling was tainted with the taste of regret in his mouth. It would have been easy to wallow, but he had work to do and that meant there was coffee to be drunk before he appeared as a functioning human being again.   
  
While Jim might have left him alone there was the bright smell of coffee from the coffee maker he didn’t remember programming last night. McCoy padded across the kitchen to where his favorite science blue mug sat waiting for him along with a brown paper bag that he knew had to be filled with cornbread from the café down the road that he used to go to all of the time because they made it almost as good as his grandma.   
  
It might have been the second worst day of his life, but the last time around he didn’t get coffee or cornbread out of the divorce, so it had to count for something.   
  
Jim was nowhere to be found. Not that McCoy expected to find him at this point, if they hadn’t woken up in bed together, he knew the kid was long gone. Instead he found a tented piece of paper behind the paper bag. He almost didn’t want to read it.   
  
What forced him to pick it up was the glint of metal sticking out from under the paper. Coffee mug in one hand, he reached for the metal dog tag with the other. McCoy closed his eyes tight, fingers running over the indented words: my bones. It was such a simple and silly thing, but at the time McCoy thought it suited them far better than each of them wearing rings.   
  
The note was simple, as most Jim notes were (with one exception). All it read was: “I thought you might want these back. Take care of yourself.”  
  
It wouldn’t be until later when he was looking through his PADD that he realized the papers had been deleted and purged from all of his files. McCoy wasn’t sure what to make of it, but decided that mutated genes were far more interesting a cause than the workings of Jim’s mind. And if it gave him a small parcel of hope to keep going, well, that was okay too.  
  
  
 **Unknown Planet AKA Maru – September 2272**  
For longest time Jim Kirk wished for Delta Vega. He longed for the biting cold and the ability to see for miles and miles, but not quite feel his toes. He would even taken some large reptilian monster trying to eat him because at least he wouldn’t have been alone and heat sick.  
  
But he had been alone. With no sentient life forms on the dozen nameless worlds in this system there was no one for light years. It hadn’t been his first thought as shuttle crashed through the atmosphere, but he had come to call the planet Maru, as in the Kobayashi Maru, because it had felt like an unbeatable test where they wanted him to fail. And unlike the real test he didn’t quite have a grasp on the operation codes so he could change the parameters in order to win.   
  
His academy survival training course had been up in the backcountry of Alaska with nothing more than a quart sized bag of what he deemed necessary and the clothes on his back. Jim Kirk knew how to insulate against the cold, to build shelters out of snow and stave off hypothermia for as long as possible. What he didn’t know how to do well was to keep hydrated in a harsh sandy desert with no above ground water sources. He had found two drip wells in what he considered sandstone canyons, but he had no equipment to determine the water quality. So with a throat that felt more like sandpaper, he had to test the water a sip at a time spread out by hours. He had quite literally been a man dying of thirst staring at a pitcher of water through a thin glass wall.   
  
There were times when he had wondered why he bothered to keep fighting, and struggled to find reason to keep going on this god forsaken planet as his body started to become evidently weaker. While the water turned out to be safe, he was about 85 percent sure he was slightly allergic to his only accessible food sources. For now, it was enough to sustain him, but not without some interesting side effects that made dying a strange event.   
  
By day forty-two, or at least what he thought was day forty-two, the hallucinations really started to set in. Unlike all the previous ones where he couldn’t quite tell if he was dreaming or awake in a Salvador Dali world sort of way, these were his memories come to haunt him. He saw that damn lizard man who fought him to the death and the stupid salt vampire. Gratefully he didn’t see any pieces of Tarsus in front him, although many of the skills he learned there were what kept him alive this time.  
  
Of course none of that matter now.   
  
Now, he was nothing more than a sun burnt captain who wasn’t going anywhere else. This was the end of the line. His face coated in the coarse sand of Maru, his body barely moving with the one shallow inhale and exhale of breath after the next, and from the tatters of his desert uniform was the glint of metal. On that chain along with the dog tag listing his allergies were two rings. At least if he couldn’t be with Bones, their rings would be together. 


	2. A Long Way to Go

**Unknown Planet AKA Maru – September 2272**  
It was impossible to know how much time had passed, but when the blurry edges of the world came back into focus it was dark. The beeping was still strong in the distance. Memories slammed into him along with the pain of a body that had reached and gone beyond its limits. For as sure as he was going to die and had been fighting it to find the source of that beep, in that moment it was clear that he really didn’t want to live.  
  
In fact the only thing he truly wanted in that moment was to be able to come home to Bones regardless of whether the other man wanted him or not. However, that was contingent on not dying.  
  
“I guess I’ll have to live a little longer.” His voice sounded foreign to his ears, but there had been no one else around to talk to for months now. Despite the ongoing protest, Jim fought his way back on to his feet. The shuttle couldn’t be more than 400 feet away, but it felt like a marathon to go. He reached up and curled his fingers around his chain, asking that the promises he made would let him go just a little bit further.   
  
  
 **Enterprise – May 2272**  
First contact missions and good will visits weren’t exactly the most demanding labor, but Jim tried not to let it bother him too much. There wasn’t any great war or impending battle for Starfleet to focus on, so Jim got a ship and the missive to go explore new and strange worlds. There were worse things he could have been asked to do. Not to mention a number of the worlds they visited recently had been quite interesting and not just the single-sex societies of Angel One or the world that seemed to developmentally be stuck in Earth’s 1970s. It was worlds full of different traditions, beliefs, and really just new ways to look at life, the universe and everything. They made for good stories, and good stories were good for the ship’s morale.   
  
As was customary, Jim invited the landing party to the captain’s mess for a more informal debrief and dinner two days after the last mission was completed and they were en route to another system for their next mission. It was in these moments it was clear that Jim Kirk ran his ship more like a family than a military organization. Many of his peers frowned upon it or criticized him for it, but at the end of the day he had the best results.   
  
So there they were, the captain and the five others who traveled down with him, a bundle of laughter and bright smiles over good food.   
  
“And, God, did you see O’Haggerty?” Riley was entirely the anti-Spock, but Jim made it work. That and the silent agreement to not talk about their shared history in public or at length. Kevin Riley may not have been his first choice for XO, but he was as fine a choice as any.   
  
“Hey! I am right here.” O’Haggerty tried to look indigent, but it wasn’t really a possibility.  
  
“Yeah, but you couldn’t exactly see yourself, could you?” Riley pushed the chair away to stand up. “You were just all parading around, squawking because some cute girl told you it was polite.” He knew someone was going to ask him demonstrate, because they always did, but he was going to beat them to it this time.   
  
The room erupted into an explosion of laughter. Jim’s laughter was a little bit more controlled, but still right there along with them. Then the lights flickered and a shutter went through the hull of the ship stopping the mirth immediately. Jim reached over to comm. engineering to see what Scotty had undoubtedly got himself mixed up in, but he would never have the chance to send that communication.  
  
The whole ship shook again this time sending the holos and PADDs on his shelves to clatter to the floor. Before Jim really had time to formulate a full plan the warning claxons started.  
  
“Everyone report to your stations.” Jim stood up, his mind racing fast ahead but his expression and tone perfectly clear. “Riley head down to engineering. I want status reports within five minutes.”  
  
But even before the six of them could move, he got a hail from Scotty. “Captain, we’ve been attacked by what appears to be a Romulan vessel. We’ve got fires through out the engineering decks. I am going to clear the sections and vent pending your approval.”  
  
Now, it was well within his right to panic, but he was still the captain. For as many times as he had gotten lucky in the past, he had the skills to back that it up. Right now his best bet was to trust the senior officers on duty until he could get up to speed.  
  
“Alright, you have two minutes to clear the sections because I know those fires are eating through our oxygen supply. Keep me updated.” Jim turned his attention back to the people still staring at him, having forgotten how to move. “Let’s move it people, if the Romulans are firing upon us, they aren’t just going to stop.”  
  
  
 **The Midwest – October 2268**  
After he left Bones and their apartment, Jim wasn’t sure where he was going to go. Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with an excuse to head back up to spacedock and oversee the retrofit for at least another month or so. His official Starfleet housing was with Bones and he couldn’t stay there. Jim might not have earned a medical degree, but he knew that clean breaks healed the fastest and that was what he needed.   
  
He might have been a 35 year old highly decorated starship captain, but right then he just wanted to trade in his stripes and gold shirts for a well worn leather jacket and a motorcycle and just go. The last road trip he went on was because he had no clue who he was or what he wanted. He drank too much, worked where he could, and got into fights if the mood or time of year was right. That Jim was a lost boy parading as a young man who refused to settle in one place. It was a constant point of amusement that the only guarantee he would stay in one place was if he was stuck in a holding cell.   
  
Still, throughout those years on the road he had found a reason to stay in small town in Michigan that didn’t add to his criminal record. Jim knew that his journey would take him that way once more, but there were places to stop along the way and Riverside would be among them.   
  
Riverside had never been home. It was a house and a place where he grew up despite a world that insisted to force limits on him. He hadn’t been back since he Pike had dared him to want something better. But now, he made the rules, and after Winona had taken a ground posting to oversee construction at the shipyards there was even cause to return.   
  
And maybe he was in search of himself now too. Starfleet and Bones had defined so much of the past thirteen years that he didn’t really know who Jim Kirk was on his own. Sure, Captain James T. Kirk was easy, but the man behind that was still something of an unknown.   
  
For better or worse, Riverside didn’t seem to change any. Once or twice a summer a group of cadets would come through on their way to or from summer postings and significantly increase the population of the town, but for the most part it was still the same group of people mulling around the streets, the same family businesses struggling to stay open, and the same police officers who still looked at him with a bit of fear because while he might be a respected hero little Jim Kirk was legend for the trouble he found for himself as a child.   
  
The Kirk Homestead was just off Wilson Street, only a stone’s throw from denser part of the town. Jim had enjoyed the location when he was younger because it gave him trees and fields to run off into when he was too young to go anywhere further. He killed his bike just outside the house, spotting what he could only assume was Winona’s car in the driveway already.   
  
He jogged up to the front door. The door that was never locked because no one in Riverside bothered to lock their front doors. And even if it was locked it wouldn’t have been a problem for him – breaking into places was easy, it was always the getting out part that was a bit trickier.   
  
“Winona?” He called out through the house, knowing better than try to sneak up on her. “Think you can spare a bed for a while?”  
  
The sliding chair came from the direction of the kitchen and Jim altered his course. Still, Winona was too quick for him and intercepted him in the hallway. “What are you doing here?” She pulled him into a brief hug because even if he had saved the world a dozen times over, he was always just Jim to her.   
  
Jim shrugged, moving out of the hug. “I’m on leave between tours. I thought I would use the time to see what happens to a Starfleet officer when she’s forced to live dirtside for a few years.” He smiled because not even his own mother was above the Kirk charm. “And I have to say you have looked better.”  
  
It was a right old lie. Despite a few more lines on her face, the woman didn’t look a day over 45. And she actually looked happy. It was a sight that he hadn’t really remembered encountering in all the years she was going from space posting to space posting when he was a child.   
  
To prove the point that she was no less of a woman now than she was the last time they met, she whacked his shoulder. “You might outrank me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t whop you for your mouth.” She put up her fists in warning. It was more play than anything else. They had never had a normal mother-son relationship. Instead they were more like college roommates who had become good friends as a result. And that worked for them.   
  
“I don’t know.” He shook his head, drawing out his words just a little bit. “I think you’ve gotten a bit slow in your old age.” Jim dodged an attempt to swat him again and moved toward the kitchen. He knew better than to turn his back on her. “I could totally take you.”  
  
She laughed and finally managed to land a second hit before declaring herself victor and the game over. “I’d like to see you try.” Winona walked passed him once in the more open space of the kitchen. She went right to the refrigerator to get him a beer. “Now, where is that man of yours?”  
  
Jim froze and at least his fingers had the sense to keep their grip on the bottle. That wasn’t the right question to ask, but how would she know? “He’s not coming.” And those were words he needed to chase with a drink.  
  
“Oh.” She reached for her own beer and took a drink as well. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
“No. Yes. Not really.” He shook his head before collapsing into a chair. “In the end, I left him, but it hadn’t been right for a while before then.”   
  
That would be the extent to which they discussed the relationship. (He certainly didn’t talk about Janice Rand who he left in California, promises of meeting up in Utah forgotten because she wasn’t what he needed.) And some part of Jim was grateful that Winona wasn’t smug about it because she had warned him. All those years ago, she told him it wasn’t going to be easy and he didn’t listen because why would he?   
  
At one point, he picked up her PADD from the table and started looking over the new ship schematics. The thing was going to be a beauty. “So, you’re going to bring me down to the shipyards tomorrow and give me the grand tour of the new constitution class they have you working on?”   
  
He knew there was no way she would say no. He might even be useful to the whole process. More than anything he needed to see the start of someone else’s dream being built. And really he should at least be able to meet the girl who would ultimately one day replace his as the ‘Fleet’s flagship.   
  
Winona indulged him and he spent a solid two weeks mucking around the shipyards. While he was technically on leave, Jim Kirk has never been good at staying still and at least he was being productive building something instead of finding ways to tear himself apart like he used to.   
  
However, just like this place couldn’t hold him when he was younger, it couldn’t hold him now. Riverside certainly didn’t give him all of the answers, but it did allow him to start asking the right sort of questions. And when he started to analyze his relationship with Bones to cause and effect with scary conclusions, he knew it was time.   
  
So, Jim Kirk left Riverside much in the same way arrived. He didn’t let Winona know ahead of time, but he did have the sense to leave her a note thanking her for the hospitality. And then it was off further east to Ann Arbor, Michigan.   
  
He didn’t call ahead there either, but he did have the sense to hack the system to see if Carol Marcus would be in her lab there or at some space station. Showing up at her place of work was not at all like showing up at the Kirk Homestead. Winona knew what to expect from her son randomly popping in and out of her life when the mood struck, but Carol had ended things with Jim in a very final way when she chose her work over him, or really over any sort of relationship at all.   
  
Not that it stopped him from strolling into her lab like he belonged there. Although that was more of a general Jim Kirk trait than a specific sort of response, it was all just a part of his armor.   
  
Carol Marcus was there, working away on her terminal. The years had done her well. Jim remembered her as the lanky blonde woman who didn’t quite belong in her body. Of course she had been a woman then, but she seemed to be more of a woman now, at home with her body. And she had filled out quite nicely over the years too.  
  
“Well, if it isn’t road warrior Jim Kirk, or rather Captain James Kirk,” she said spinning in her chair to look at him. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Her tone was light, surprised by the visit but not immediately put off by his arrival.  
  
“Doctor Carol Marcus.” He echoed her greeting with a warm smile in place. “It is still Marcus, right?” Jim knew the answer to that, but he asked because he could. After all, he had changed a great deal since they were last together. Most notably being the captain in front of his name and less noticeably the ring no longer on the chain around his neck.  
  
“Do you make it a habit of surprising all your past sexual partners?”  
  
“Just the ones who reluctantly steal medical equipment to patch me up.” He moved into the office and sat down in the empty chair across from her. He remembered that night well. Another bar fight protecting some stranger’s honor and he was taken home with Carol who repeatedly reminded him she wasn’t studying to become that sort of doctor.   
  
Her hands had been gentle, sure in what they were doing even as she insisted this wasn’t her area of expertise. And once she was sure he wasn’t going to bleed on the good sheets, those hands became a good deal less doctorly and far more casual. Jim still bristling with the adrenaline rush had so easily just fallen into Carol’s warm body in a way that was very much a first for him.   
  
And if the look on her face said anything, it was that she remembered too. “Any reason why you decided to show up now?”  
  
“I arrived back in San Francisco about a month ago, hopped on a bike and just started driving.” It wasn’t entirely a lie and it was as close to the truth as she was going to get. There was almost fifteen years of no contact between them any further details didn’t seem appropriate. (And the fact that he now had boundaries about his personal life was quite telling.)  
  
Carol laughed because he had said something to that effect the first time they met. Only then the starting location had been Riverside and the time on the road much longer. “Well, then you’re almost two years early.”   
  
Jim was about to provide a witty response when he was interrupted. “Mom!” The voice was getting closer, but not quite in his line of sight. “I think I have something here.”  
  
“Do all of your lab techs call you mom?” He said it as a joke, but Carol didn’t look amused. In fact, judging by how her body tensed, she was worried. Jim was about to give thought to the matter when it was almost immediately answered for him.  
  
Because there he was, a young man, no more than fifteen, blonde hair and bright blue eyes standing at the office entrance. Looking at the young man there was no doubt that half of that kid’s genetic material belonged to Jim Kirk.   
  
“Think there was something you forgot to tell me?”  
  
Carol just glared at him. That was enough for Jim to not say anything else. Taking down Klingons were one thing, dealing with angry women was a completely different beast. “David, why don’t you show me what you think you found?” Carol rose from her desk and led the boy out of the office, away from Jim.   
  
Other men might have run at such a revelation, but Jim was determined to see this through. He had started this road trip to figure out who he was and while he wasn’t expecting father to be a part of it, but he wouldn’t hide from it when he didn’t even understand how it happened. Well, no he got the how, he was there too, but more the part of him not knowing.  
  
After a few minutes Carol returned looking ready for war and really Jim just wanted a few answers. Neither of them spoke for a full minute before Jim broke the silence. “Well?”  
  
She leaned against her back against her desk. “I didn’t know I was pregnant until I started throwing up every morning on the starbase four weeks after I left you.” Carol’s voice was calm, ever the scientist at that moment. “At the time you weren’t exactly looking to be anyone’s father, but I was ready to be a mother. Plus there was that whole issue of light years between us and I had no way to contact you.”  
  
“But didn’t you think…during the whole…” Jim had no clue where to start because this was not something he was expecting. “Shit, I would have liked to know.”  
  
“Well, now you know.”  
  
That wasn’t a good enough answer for Jim, but short of finding a way to travel back in time, he wasn’t going to be able to change the past. (That was cheating.) And really he didn’t have much right to be too upset over this. He did however have to ask an important question. “Who does he think his father is?”  
  
Carol smiled, but it wasn’t a happy sort of smile. “David knows his father is a brilliant young man who passed through my life as I was finishing my PhD.”  
  
“Can I-?”  
  
“I don’t know if that would be best, Jim.” He knew that the words weren’t aimed to wound him, but they did. “We live in two very different worlds.” And it was clear she was saying that David belonged in hers.  
  
“I just…” He took a deep breath in. Jim had stopped civilizations from going to war with each other, but couldn’t find the words to negotiate the opportunity to properly meet his son. “I know what it’s like to grow up without a father and that sort of sucked.”  
  
“Do you think it would be better for him now?” She pushed off her desk, walking toward Jim. Or so Jim thought. It soon became clear that she was walking toward the door to block any rash movements he might back. “To have you for a few days, maybe weeks before you’re off again on some new adventure?”  
  
Jim sighed, slouching forward. She did have a point. “I’d just like to meet him that’s all.” He looked right up at her. In that moment he was almost too open. But it seemed to work because she gave him her blessing to at least meet the young man.   
  
Jim didn’t know if he would be able to do it. To meet a being that he created and not take ownership, but simply walk away. Although really in the big scheme of things he just provided the genetic material and Carol raised him. As much as he might want to have claim on this child, he didn’t.   
  
After a few minutes to find that Kirk courage and quell some of the ability to look without leaping he walked through the laboratory to find David. The kid was hunched over a viewer, completely enthralled. Jim waited until he looked up to introduce himself.  
  
“Hey there, David, I’m Jim, Jim Kirk.” He put out his hand in greeting, but it didn’t feel like it was enough.   
  
“Like the famous Starfleet captain?” David asked while shaking Jim’s hand.  
  
He smiled at the fact that this kid didn’t have a clue who he was. Not that it was too surprising, for all his supposed fame it was years ago. And really as the Kelvin Baby there had been a lot of Jims in his generation. “Actually, I am that Jim Kirk.”   
  
That seemed to impress David, who nearly knocked over the viewer he was using a moment ago. It was endearing in a sad sort of way because the kid in awe of him, but had some of his DNA.   
  
“How do you know my mom?”  
  
“We’re old friends,” he said, “she gave me a sense of purpose when I was lost for a while.” That had been Carol Marcus, the one person who knew how to challenge him to be better without him immediately fighting back. Hell, her encouragement was even enough to earn half of a degree. “She’s good people.”  
  
David rolled his eyes. “Well, obviously.” And Jim couldn’t help laugh at that. While he had never been a real fourteen-year-old kid, he did imagine that David was a pretty average one.  
  
“So, I see that you’re taking after her.” He motioned to the equipment around them. Knowing well that he would have to augment his definition of average here because most kids his age didn’t spend their summers in laboratories.   
  
“I like science, especially microbiology.” He shrugged. David spoke the words like they were most obvious thing in the word. “I’m almost done with high school and colleges have been recruiting me for a year now.”  
  
Jim wasn’t surprised that David was smart. He expected no less of his gene pool. What did surprise him was how much David reminded him of Bones. If he wanted to pretend, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine David Marcus being David Kirk-McCoy. Only that was far too complicated a thought to have in front of a kid who wasn’t supposed to know who he really was.   
  
“Well, if you ever want to apply to the Academy, let me know and I would be happy to write you a recommendation.” Jim patted David on the back. He didn’t want to linger here any longer in fear he might slip up. “It was nice to meet you, David.”  
  
“You too, Captain Kirk.”  
  
Jim smiled at the boy because it was expected of him, but really his heart was just torn. He didn’t know what to feel then. This road trip was getting far more complicated than he would have liked it to be. Maybe he should have stayed in Riverside, but then it would have just been more years without the knowledge that the Kirk legacy could live on without him and it wouldn’t even have to carry the weight of the name to live up to.   
  
He left Ann Arbor later that day, unsure where he was going, but he would know when he got there. After all, the truth was that he was still the same and maybe it wasn’t enough, but it was all he had.   
  
And at least for a little while longer he could have the open road too.   
  
  
 **Unknown Planet AKA Maru – September 2272**  
Walking had never been so much of a laborious process. Every step was like trudging up the north face of Mount Diablo. The steady beep of someone in communications range becoming a point of annoyance or really some damn green light across the bay that he would never really be able to hold just constantly reach for. Jim’s body was done, but for some stupid reason his mind wanted him to keep going.  
  
If he were romantic or sentimental, he would have assigned it the desire to see Bones one last time because surely that it was Bones or maybe Spock who had found him. Who else would go looking for him? The pessimistic side of his mind told him that beeping was the coming of a swift death because the Romulan ships had found him and were coming to clean up the rest of their mess.  
  
Whatever the reason, he wouldn’t know until he finally got there.   
  
  
 **San Francisco – January 2269**  
It would be four months before McCoy sent Jim any sort of communication. It wasn’t that he didn’t think of the man, just that they were both too good at throwing themselves into their work. However, it still took him no less than six times to get the wording right. It had been simple, no more than 50 words and even that felt like a dissertation.   
  


> From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Sent: 18.1.2269 03:27FST  
> To: Kirk, James CAPT  
> Subject: psych officer posting
> 
> Jim,
> 
> One of my colleagues was talking about your new psych officer. Apparently she’s one of the best in the field. Might not be a bad idea to schedule an appointment with her. I just started seeing someone at Medical. 
> 
> I think it’s helping.
> 
> McCoy

  
But it that seemed to open a floodgate of communications between the two of them.   
  


> From: Kirk, James CAPT   
> Sent: 23.1.2269 9:27FST  
> To: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Subject: re: psych officer posting
> 
> Exhaustion is counterproductive to progress. I think you might have told me that at least a dozen of times. 
> 
> I am glad to hear that you are finally going to see someone. I knew you would do it eventually. It just had to be on your own terms. Although I can’t help but wonder what brought it on.
> 
> I even took the initiative to schedule myself an appointment. Look at that, Captain James Kirk, proving he can indeed walk without training wheels.
> 
>  
> 
> From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Sent: 2.2.2269 00:27FST  
> To: Kirk, James CAPT  
> Subject: I’m a doctor, Jim, not training wheels
> 
> Jim, 
> 
> Well, at the start of term I spent six hours listening to Reynolds fall apart in my office. I swear I don’t make them cry. All I did was ask how her leave went because she wouldn’t shut up about for months prior. Her boyfriend is in Special Ops and they don’t see each other all that often, so it’s apparently a big deal when they do see each other. You can imagine how thrilled I was to learn about my admin’s personal life every time I asked her for something. 
> 
> Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother, but she had this look about her and of course I had to ask. I imagine it would be practice for Joanna – although some idiot breaks her heart and he might not get the best treatment next time he comes through Medical. 
> 
> Anyway after hearing her go on and on forever, I told he that relationships aren’t the sort of things where if you love someone the most you get to keep them. To which she told me that maybe it should be. That made me pause because I saw myself in her. Reynolds was so desperate to keep holding on and not let go of something that was over and it was just plain dumb. 
> 
> And you know I have no tolerance for unnecessarily stupidity, so I decided it was time. I needed to move on. 
> 
> I spend all of this time watching these children mulling about the place at Medical. Makes me feel damn old is what – old and like the whole world has suddenly come around to my way of thinking. They all work their asses off academically because they have to, but socially it’s just damn awkward and makes for piss poor bedside manner. I don’t know sometimes I think that the whole lot of us are just selling joy for a promise that we won’t feel sad anymore. 
> 
> It’s not that we don’t want to be happy it’s just that we’re so damn scared of being sad. Well, I’m done being scared. 
> 
> And I think I’m just going to send this off before I sober up enough to stop myself from doing it – but I insist that I’m not that drunk right now. Although I might have enjoyed a few too many fingers of bourbon, right…
> 
> McCoy
> 
>  
> 
> From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Sent: 2.2.2269 07:04FST  
> To: Kirk, James CAPT  
> Subject: ignore the prior message
> 
> If I was a computer genius I might have hacked into the system and stopped it from being sent, but I was never that good with computers like that. Although maybe with subspace being what it is you’ll get this one first because it’s shorter.
> 
> So let me summarize the message I sent you: McCoy gets morose and philosophical when he’s drunk. He’s tired of being stupid so he got help.
> 
> McCoy
> 
>  
> 
> From: Kirk, James CAPT   
> Sent: 11.2.2269 21:54FST  
> To: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Subject: patience is not a virtue
> 
> You know telling me not to read a message is like a guarantee that I’m going to read it as soon as possible. Of course that meant I had to wait two full days for the second data packet to come through. I almost tampered with our subspace communications system, but Lt. O’Haggerty still gets anxious when I touch or even look too long at his control panel. The man is no Uhura, although he has starting rocking the unisex dress and he has some nice legs. 
> 
> Here’s the thing you forgot with your stunning realization with Reynolds (also don’t try to have sex with her, it messes with your head): love is love and it hurts all the same. It’s just bigger than any one person is. 
> 
> I don’t think I have ever said this, but I’m sorry for blaming you for how it all fell apart. I know you were doing what you could, and I was doing the same. But I’m not sorry for any of the other pieces because it made me realize who I was, who I am. 
> 
> God, Bones, we ran into our first medical crisis the other day, which I can’t go into too much detail about just yet and it made me realize that I seriously took your medical miracles for granted far too many times. So, I hope you are teaching those kids everything you can possibly can because while Dr. Kendall is good, she’s not great. 
> 
>  
> 
> From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Sent: 19.2.2269 18:13FST  
> To: Kirk, James CAPT  
> Subject: you amaze me and not in a good way
> 
> Jim,
> 
> Doctor Alexandra Kendall is one of the top cardiothoracic surgeons in the Federation. The woman is a downright genius and if she couldn’t have solved the problem in time I doubt I would have been able to either. 
> 
> Also, what gives you the right to dictate who I can and cannot have sex with? I am grown man with needs, Jim. Needs that haven’t been fulfilled in a long, long time. However, Sulu has set me up on a blind date with a friend of Susan, his fiancé. I reckon he misses his adrenaline buddy while he’s down here teaching, waiting to head back out for his next tour – have you heard anything about the ship they’re giving him? It’s also clear he misses the crazy Russian whiz kid, and I have to say I might as well. I mean not everyone tries to convince me I’m from "the other Georgia." 
> 
> I haven’t heard from Spock or Uhura lately aside from the data Intrepid has been sending back, which has some of the science track cadets losing plenty of sleep over. 
> 
> And you leave O’Haggerty be, he can wear whatever he damn well pleases. It might do you well to mix up the wardrobe some. I mean imagine the look the attacking Klingon when he realizes a man in a skirt defeated him.
> 
> McCoy
> 
>  
> 
> From: Kirk, James CAPT   
> Sent: 3.3.2269 06:37FST  
> To: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Subject: on young captains and ambassadors
> 
> Doctor McCoy getting back on the proverbial horse again. Hopefully you don’t make such a bad impression with the lady that you get Sulu in trouble with his. And don’t worry about our adrenaline fixes, I’ve already got Sulu to agree to some death defying stunt next time I’m on leave so we can both get our fill. I’ve already had to promise the future Mrs. Sulu that I wouldn’t break him, so I suppose that extends to me as well. Might come back with a bruise or two, but I’ve still got some time before that happens. 
> 
> Can’t say I’ve heard much from the others. Well, save the official channels. Although without you to supervise him Scotty has come up with some interesting new brews and of course Enterprise misses you constantly denying her loveliness. 
> 
> The Admiralty has Enterprise heading off into deep space for the next couple of months to do so some ambassador stuff and try our hand at first contact missions again. At least that means we’ll be off the front line for a while – leave that to all the ‘young’ captains so they can get their feet wet. Mind you the youngest captain in the fleet right now is only two years younger than me. 
> 
> So, I have taken to randomly calling them when they are in range for live contact and telling them tall tales. I even got to go rock climbing with the captain of Defiant last weekend. Well, it didn’t exactly start out as a rock climbing venture, but it turned into one. 
> 
> Sorry to cut this thrilling communication short but I’m due in the gym. It takes work to look this good. Plus, if I got to impress diplomats and new aliens I have to look my best – can’t have them thinking Starfleet is a bunch of paunchy old men. 
> 
>  
> 
> From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Sent: 27.3.2269 08:34FST  
> To: Kirk, James CAPT  
> Subject: summer plans
> 
> Jim,
> 
> I am going to take a guess and assume that by the time you get this message I will be in the middle of finals and gearing up for my temporary summer assignment. They have me heading off to Georgia to finish the final round of trials for the vaccine to Topaline Sickness. I think we might have actually found the cure.
> 
> I am kind of anxious about going back. 
> 
> McCoy
> 
>  
> 
> From: Kirk, James CAPT   
> Sent: 5.3.2269 11:43FST  
> To: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
> Subject: 
> 
> You’ll be fine. We’ll chat when I’m back in range.

  
**Enterprise – May 2272**  
“Captain, may I have a word in your ready room?”   
  
Rather than be in his chair, Jim was trying to man the open station at the helm because the pilot on shift was now in sickbay fighting for his life. Goddamn Romulans. He turned around as Riley addressed him just back from engineering. Jim wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or a bad sign that Scotty couldn’t be spared to come up to the bridge with him. Although, given the fact this was a conversation that Riley wanted to have in private, it probably wasn’t a good thing.   
  
Jim handed the bridge over to O’Haggerty and walked wordless into his ready room. When Riley didn’t immediately say anything, Jim knew that he would have to use formalities to get useful answers from him. “Report, commander.”  
  
Riley swallowed the lump in his throat. “We lost at least four engineers, a half dozen more are in critical condition in sickbay. Two decks are inaccessible and the fire or maybe the phaser canon hit has taken out primary life support systems.”  
  
It was then that Jim was immediately glad that he had a good poker face. “So, that means we are running on the back up system, which along with the oxygen gardens can give us at least two weeks, although it might get cold.”  
  
It wasn’t ideal, but they could work with that and when Riley didn’t immediately move to agree he knew there was more. “Mister Scott is working with his team to reroute all power from unnecessary systems to the back up life support.”  
  
This on top of the fact that all they had to move them along were the thrusters didn’t exactly put Enterprise into the best position, but he supposed it could have been worse.  
  
And just then as if the universe was listening, the wall comm. beeped at them. Jim reached over and pressed the button. “Kirk here.”  
  
“Captain, our long range communications system has gone off line due to failure of structural integrity likely cause by the fires. I did manage to transmit the preliminary report on the Romulan ships before the system went down, but otherwise no messages will be sent or received,” said O’Haggerty. “We’re dead in the water and no one knows where we are.” 


	3. Bigger Than I Am

**San Francisco – June 2272**  
McCoy woke up that morning like he had on the majority of all mornings for the past four years – alone with the sensation that something was missing in his life. Most mornings he was too busy to pause and consider what it really meant, but this morning felt different from the others. There was a ringing of regret deep in the pit of his stomach that stayed with him well past the two cups of coffee that usually made them go away.   
  
And if his mind directed him toward the small wooden box on his dresser that morning to pull out the damned dog tag that he had managed to avoid looking at in nearly three months? Well, that was just the universe reminding him that while he might be able to heal people, it was not without it’s cost.   
  
Perhaps the lingering thoughts of Jim had to do with his impending shuttle ride to Republic in three days and his return to a place that he had to leave behind. Or maybe it was about leaving this place.  
  
Not that San Francisco was home. McCoy had never expected it to be. He was not the sort of man who found home in any singular place. Home for him was a moment in time or the people that disrupted the molecules in the air around him. Georgia had been home because Gram was there along with his dad and all of those other pieces that imbued meaning to something as plain as physical location.   
  
San Francisco had only been anything close to home after the fourth class earned their carry on and he had the liberty to forge a friendship with Jim. And hell, even that bucket of bolts across the galaxy making headway near the Romulan Neutral Zone had been home for a time. Only that was taken from him when Jim walked away, but maybe that was the price in finding home in mutable objects or people.   
  
Even with his baby girl here San Francisco was an assignment, something he put up with because he was good at what he did and had a chance to change protocol and procedures well past his own lifetime. (There was also the small fact that the choice was the Academy or Capella and if he was going to deal with stupidity, he always preferred the human sort.)   
  
So, maybe it wasn’t butterflies because he was going home because the black certainly wasn’t home, and he wasn't leaving this home. It wasn’t his fear of flying either because by now that was an old hat. No, this was something else all together – something that felt similar to Jim bounding into his room with his next reckless idea that would only add to his gray hairs.   
  
McCoy wasn’t a fool, just because he wasn’t in space anymore didn’t mean that it was any less dangerous. Or even that he stopped worrying about the disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence. If anything there were times when he worried more because he wasn’t out there to talk certain captains down from terrible or no good ideas, to patch them up later, and yes, even to pull some sort of miracle out of his ass. There were even times when he was walking from the hospital to campus when he caught himself staring up at the sky and wondering what he was missing out on stuck on the ground all these years. McCoy would certainly never admit that he sometimes found himself missing the stars or actually looking forward to getting back out there.   
  
And yet that was where he was headed. After six months spent fighting for the curriculum overhaul, McCoy was taking his first rotation of residents to the USS Republic. For three years he had been quite verbal, and in a position where people had to listen about how the Academy could better produce medical officers fully capable to serve in the black. Hell, what granted him any sort of grace during the Narada incident was not the additional training he received courtesy of the Medical Academy, but rather his time spent running the Emergency Department at Grady. So after nearly 15 years of bitching about the training program, he was finally going to show them how it ought to be done.   
  
Or he would if the bureaucratic side of the Admiralty didn’t like to rear its ugly head to remind him who was really running the show and just how little power he had if he wasn’t specifically given it. Even if the summons was from Admiral Pike, three days before the shuttle would send them up to the USS Republic he knew it had to be more of the same bullshit peacocking.   
  
“You requested my presence, sir?” Regardless of who it was, McCoy would have still found himself unwilling to hide his annoyance over the circumstance. At least with Pike there was less of a chance of a dress down about his attitude, which at this point wasn’t going to change a damn. They all knew that, but they still made the motions to pretend it might.   
  
The admiral, not truly old by modern standards, turned from the bookshelf and walked surely toward his desk with the aid of a cane. It was nothing short of a miracle that he walked at all, and Jim would have argued that was all the doing Doctor Leonard H. McCoy – maker of miracles. Of course McCoy knew that it wasn’t so much a miracle but rather a yearlong neurosurgery fellowship where he barely saw his home or his beautiful daughter, but results were results.  
  
Pike sat stiffly in the chair behind his desk and motioned for McCoy to sit across from him. He didn’t like the silence that hung between them. Really, he didn’t like the way that Pike was looking at him. He damn well knew that look. It was the same look that he gave families when a patient hadn’t made it through the surgery or something had gone wrong.   
  
“If this is about my program…” And deep down he knew it wasn’t because Pike wouldn’t be looking at him like that if it were about his new residency program. But if it wasn’t about the program there was only one other thing it could be about.   
  
Pike put his hand up to stop McCoy from continuing down the wrong path. At least the admiral wasn’t going to make him play guessing games. “Leonard,” he started and McCoy instantly tensed. If he was using his name rather than a title it was going to be bad. Or rather it was going to be personal. “I have been asked to inform you that we have lost contact with Enterprise. The final transmissions cite an encounter with a small Romulan armada. And those were sent over a week ago.”  
  
There was likely more to say, but McCoy had never exactly been a man for letting others have their piece, not when he had an opinion to weigh in on the situation and he certainly had one about this.   
  
“What do you mean you lost Enterprise? With all due respect, how do you lose the god damn flagship?” He pushed out of the chair, his mind reeling in a hundred different directions. McCoy was clearly emotionally compromised, but then again he wasn’t in charge of a ship, so he could be compromised however he damn well saw fit. ”Good God, man!”  
  
Christopher Pike might have been guaranteed a lifetime of desk jobs after the Narada incident, but he was by no means soft. “McCoy sit down and shut up.” The words rang clear draining McCoy of all his righteous anger and causing him fall back into the chair. “Our closet ships with long range sensors have been scanning the area for Enterprise, but there is a concentrated number of Romulan ships in the area, and without a confirmed reading, the Admiralty deems it too much of a risk to simply go in blind.”  
  
Well over a decade later the devastation of the Narada incident still rippled throughout the entire Federation. Jim had always said it made the Admiralty stupid, and McCoy felt there was something to be said about a bit of caution. It had been one of the many things they disagreed over and often bickered about when there was nothing better to do. But sitting there on the other end of it, well, maybe Jim was right. (Although fuck if McCoy was going to let him know that.)  
  
McCoy swallowed the lump in his throat, not sure how he should feel or what he should allow Pike to see. So, he did his best to not to be the helpless patient receiving the bad news – not nearly as practiced as skill, but if he looked at this like a medical case maybe he could keep his cards close. “Is there an intention of letting me know this information, sir?”  
  
There was a pregnant pause between the two of them. Pike was staring him down with a looked that said ‘I see through your façade.’ And while he might have, Pike was gracious enough to let him keep it. “I wanted to make sure that in light of this news you are still capable to take on your upcoming assignment.”  
  
He took a deep breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth. This was what happened – Starfleet made widows and widowers. And to think he had thought receiving the divorce papers for the second time had been the worst thing that could possibly happen between the two of them, but Jim Kirk was still legally his spouse. And that also made him the person responsible for telling Winona Kirk. However, that was his personal life. His professional one would have to continue on. Just because Jim Kirk and a whole damn ship was missing didn’t mean that Starfleet no longer needed better-trained medical staff. If anything this was just proof that they probably needed them even more because who knew what was going on out there if the crew was capable of handling the situation.   
  
“To the job, sir.” So, it was with a heavy heart full of uncertainty that Leonard McCoy would return to the black.   
  
  
 **Atlanta – Summer 2269**  
After being run out of this city McCoy never thought he would be working here again. (Or even that Grady would respectfully request an hour or two of his ‘valuable time’ to give a lecture to the residents or even call him for a handful of consults.) But then again he never anticipated a future in which he took orders and assignments from Starfleet, or one in which he was something of a hero in the eyes of many. So, when the Academy told him he was taking a group of medical students on temporary assignment to the CDC in Atlanta he grumbled to himself and started packing. It wasn’t like he really had much of a choice in the matter. At least the labs he would have access to in Atlanta had the equipment and safety protocols in place for him to start the final testing phase on the cure that he was all but sure he found.   
  
Still, it was strange to be back here, stranger still to be making the commute from the McCoy homestead in Chattahoochee Hills to Atlanta each day that he had decades ago. He could have been put up in Starfleet housing in the city, but this way he had his work, could teach his students, and then not have to worry about accidentally bumping into or hearing about Jocelyn or Clay outside of that because the Treadways were something of a big deal around Atlanta. And to their story McCoy was the funny little detour in their epic romance that bred a beautiful child and not much else.   
  
And he couldn’t really be bitter about the whole thing. He and Jocelyn might have a world of differences between the two of them, but they had both let go of that anger a long time ago. Besides, the best thing that happened to him was his little girl and that was due in large part to all of the sacrifices that Jocelyn was able to make when he would not.   
  
Try as he might to avoid it, it was only a matter of time before he was invited over for Sunday dinner. His response was playfully, “As long as Joce isn’t cooking,” because he couldn’t just turn it down.   
  
The dinner that followed wasn’t just civil, but outright pleasant once Clay truly understood that McCoy wasn’t looking to get Jocelyn back, not even a little. Yet the food and the conversation sated, but never filled him. However, McCoy had been something of a starving man for over a year now, so he took what they could offer.   
  
“So, what is the deal with you and Jim, anyway?” It was a fair question, even from Jocelyn who might not have a say in his love or sex life anymore, but she wanted to see him happy. A thought which was sometimes difficult for McCoy to swallow, but just because they weren’t in love anymore, didn’t mean they couldn’t still love each other. After all, they did have a common bond in Joanna and while not enough to maintain a marriage, that and some time was more than enough to make them friends again.   
  
Still, it wasn’t exactly a topic he wanted to broach. He might have tried to describe his relationship with Jim in vague terms to others, but there was something profoundly different in telling his ex-wife the truth of how bad things might actually be. “We’re giving each other some time,” was the best answer he could offer.  
  
Whether it was his tone or the scary possibility that she still knew him better than he anticipated, Jocelyn didn’t press for more details than that. “Does this giving of time allow you to have dinner with a lovely lady named Nancy?”   
  
McCoy raised an eyebrow that caused her to laugh - and he couldn’t remember the last time he heard her laugh like that when they were together. He also couldn’t remember the last time he made Jim laugh with such carefree mirth even if it was at his expense. And that just made him realize how much of a lost case he actually was.  
  
So he knew what he had to do. “I would love to meet Nancy,” he said.  
  
Even if the first blind date he went on was something of a disaster, this one felt like it was starting out on the right foot. Nancy had just moved to Atlanta taking a job in the department of public health. She knew who Doctor Leonard McCoy was and therefore she knew that whatever happened between them was temporary and McCoy needed temporary.   
  
The most McCoy hoped for was to not make a fool of himself again. He certainly didn’t expect to find Miss Nancy Carter quite likeable. It was that certain spark in her eye and the thoughtful questions about his research with just a hint of silent cheerleading that made it feel like they had done this before.   
  
One dinner became lunch two days later and then catching a Braves game on Saturday. In a strange way Atlanta, of all the god-awful cities in the universe, started to feel just a little more like home again. Then it was the leap of taking her back to his house a few days later.   
  
“So, this is the great McCoy homestead,” she said falling back onto the porch swing. “Can’t see why Jocelyn wouldn’t have wanted to live out here.”  
  
The comment was harmless and surely not intended to put a smile on his face, but it did. She fit into this place in a similar way that Jim had all of those years before. Only she didn’t move to rewrite his history. No, Nancy wasn’t looking to conquer anything. Instead she learned the pieces of him he was willing to share and accepted them as best she could. From there her only intention was to create her own little memories to add to this place if he allowed her the grace of movement.   
  
And they did make memories. Nothing quite so epic, but like most things in life Leonard McCoy was a good twenty to thirty years too late for a picturesque summer romance, but he didn’t question it. He just found joy in the way two hot and sticky bodies fell into each other under the bright Georgia stars.   
  
McCoy and Nancy spent their time together in an effortless ways between labs, medical students, and public policy. Neither made any great effort to change whatever course they were on, but instead discovered that on their paths there was room for a companion. They didn’t pretend that what they had was forever. Rather they joked about a clichéd romance that might be the plot of some movie or paperback romance. The two were able to talk about things – the elephant that was Jim Kirk included – and that was when he knew he was finally back on the horse again. (And that maybe it was going to be okay.)   
  
However, eventually the summer would come to an end.   
  
What he didn’t say was ‘you should come back to San Francisco,’ but rather, “We ship out tomorrow.” Granted a cross-country romance wasn’t exactly distance given how far the world as they knew it reached, but it had never been about physical distance for McCoy.   
  
She smiled, a sad sort of smile that made her beautiful. “I’ll miss you,” she said because it was all she could say. McCoy looked at their hands still intertwined – hers were soft hands. But there was Nancy was looking at him, like he was something to be waited for. They didn’t promise to write or keep in touch. It was just a long embrace before he watched her walk away.   
  
McCoy was back in San Francisco for no more than twelve hours when his PADD was bombarded with messages from Enterprise, which apparently was not only just back in the quadrant, but was also in range for live communications. Not one to be impulsive McCoy spent the better part of the next three days weighing the consequences of calling and not calling Jim while sorting through his new students’ histories.   
  
It was over a year now, they were talking, and they were both dating or at least having sex with other people. Or whatever Jim was doing or claiming to be doing. McCoy should have been able to at least look the other man in the eye. Even if he hadn’t looked him in the eye since before they had almost-getting-divorced sex.   
  
And how that day had seemed to haunt him for the past year. Maybe it was misplaced nostalgia, but sometimes McCoy swore he could still remember how Jim felt under his fingertips. Even with two other women since Jim, whatever mental ghost remained of Jim’s presence sang out the loudest. But that was Jim right down to his core, unable to be ignored even when he wasn’t there.   
  
So, he wasn’t entirely surprised when halfway through the files Jim’s face popped up on the screen posted on the wall. Without thought he opened the line of communication.   
  
“You know, Reynolds is not at all how I imagined her.” Enterprise was easily a few light years away, but somehow with each in their too large assigned quarters it almost felt too close.  
  
McCoy shook his head, rolling his eyes because that was what he did. “Why have you been annoying my assistant?” He crossed his arms over his chest, challenging the tired looking man on the other end of the line.  
  
“Because someone doesn’t stick to his schedule ever. You know Chapel never would have allowed that.” And McCoy nearly smiled at the thought because his head nurse (now studying to become a doctor in her own right) was about the only person who could get him to leave medbay and stay gone during his shifts off.   
  
He could have commented on that, but the unspoken issue at hand was far more interesting. “God, Jim, do you have nothing better to do then hack my schedule?”  
  
To which the reply was a carefree sort of laughter that McCoy couldn’t remember the last time he heard, but that was how it worked – you never thought the last time was going to be the last time until it didn’t come again. So, he made a point to remember this one just in case.   
  
“Maybe I just like that look on your face when I do,” said Jim. And while McCoy couldn’t see his own expression at the moment he knew it was a mix between mildly pissed off and this better lead to something good or you’re never going to hear the end of it. And Jim always ignored it in order to get to what he actually wanted to talk about. “So, Atlanta, huh?”  
  
The three words that barely made a sentence was Jim trying to sound casual, but they had known each other too long to not hear everything that wasn’t captured in the limitations of human speech. However, that didn’t mean that McCoy was willing to just answer the question until Jim was ready to partially ask.   
  
“Yes, Jim, I just go back from Atlanta with a group of students in tow.” It was the same sort of tone he might have used on Joanna when she was younger responding to endless questions about what dad was doing out in space. “It was just thrilling.”   
  
Jim paused a moment, squinting at McCoy before sitting up a bit straighter at his desk. “Break any hearts while you were there?”   
  
And there it was, that question McCoy wasn’t sure he wanted to be asked because it was still unclear as to what they were to each other anymore. On his part, it took him the span of ten seconds to decide that it was best for the kid to hear the truth from him because there was no doubt in McCoy’s mind that if Jim wanted to know he would work his way through the scuttlebutt until he found what his instinct knew was out there. “I did meet a lovely woman, through Jocelyn no less, she works in the department of public health.”   
  
With no immediate sign of protest, McCoy proceeded to tell Jim all about Nancy Carter, just like it might have been any other time. The difference was that when his story was over and done there would be no reclaiming and reconnection between the two of them. Instead, the silence lingered between them – not outright uncomfortable, but not full of that old familiarity. They were each lost in their own thoughts, waiting for the other to speak first.  
  
“It was harder than I thought it would be to leave her.”   
  
McCoy barely realized he spoke that out loud until Jim responded to it with a simple: “I know.” And those words rang out with such clarity, it made McCoy pause and realize exactly what they were talking about now.   
  
His shoulders dropped unsure what to make of that admittance especially when he meant that it was hard to have to go back to spending each night alone. People might have filled his bed for short periods at a time, but it wasn’t the same of knowing Jim would be in their bed when he got home.  
  
“Well, if it’s any consolation,” Jim started causing McCoy to look up and meet the man on the comm., “It’s a lot harder to be the one who stays behind." And if the words didn’t jar, the smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes certainly did. “I made my whole life here, and now everyone I know is gone off to better things.”  
  
It was another long moment of the two just staring at each other, taking in each nuance, wishing there was a tactile supplement to this conversation, but for all the leaps and bounds made in science that wasn’t one of them. And maybe it was better to have to muddle through in words and not retreat to the safety of touch. Either way, it was still far too honest an admission.   
  
Before McCoy could think any better of it, the words “I love you” slipped from his lips like some kind of apology.   
  
“I lov-”  
  
“No.” His voice was gentle, needing to stop Jim before he said it too. “Not yet.” Right now he just wanted to hold on that fragile hope to help him through this phase of his life. It was just loneliness right now, he wasn’t ready to put his heart back on the line. “Not yet, Jim.”  
  
  
 **Republic – July 2272**  
Three weeks. It had been over three weeks and there was still no word of Enterprise, just insignificant pieces of her scattered about the Romulan Neutral Zone and trails that just went cold. Pike sent McCoy updates when he could, but they were far and in between and never what McCoy wanted or needed to hear.   
  
It was three weeks, one day and about six hours before he received a communication that Enterprise had been found. The communication came with an air of a relief that was immediately kicked out from under him when he read that while a barely functioning Enterprise was being hauled to space dock for repairs (if not retirement) that one shuttle pod had not been recovered.  
  
McCoy didn’t have to keep reading to know who had been on that shuttle pod – there was only one idiot who would have gone off with a promise to save the ship and crew and actually do so.   
  
It would be another fourteen hours and twenty-three minutes before he received the official data packet from Starfleet Command informing him that Captain James T. Kirk was classified missing in action. It spoke of the hero who risked everything for his crew and for what Starfleet stood for. And of course they were every sorry for his loss.  
  
(It would be another twenty-eight hours before he received a letter he never wanted to receive. The other was still just under six days away.)  
  
He almost wanted to laugh at the canned spouse missing in action communication because none of that described Jim. Sure, he risked his life but it wasn’t because he was the perfect officer that Starfleet always wanted him to be. No, Jim risked everything because despite the bravado, his heart was always a little too big, and he did what he needed to protect his family.   
  
What followed was the most steadfast textbook case of denial that anyone could see. McCoy ignored the knowing looks and empty condolences the crew on board Republic gave him, ignored that way his second batch of residents acted like he might burst at any given moment. But he wasn’t going to break because he knew they were wrong.   
  
Leonard McCoy had known it from the moment he found himself in love with Jim Kirk. No matter what the circumstance, the bastard was going to outlive him or bleed out on his table. That was how the universe worked for men like McCoy.  
  
Jim missing in action right now was just that – Jim missing in action, already fighting his way back (because he had warned him) or waiting for his crew (his real crew) to pull together some spectacular rescue.  
  
And it was then that McCoy knew that he was going to take on the charge that Jim had unknowingly left for him.   
  
  
 **McCoy’s Inbox – July 2272**  
From: Carter, Nancy   
Sent: 12.7.2272 21:03 FST  
To: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Subject: my condolences  
  
Dear Leonard,  
  
Reports are already all over the nets about the great James T. Kirk. If memory serves this is even more attention than he got after he saved us the first time around, but that is so like a military organization to prefer their heroes dead. I am sure I don’t have to say this, but I am not by any means making light of this matter.   
  
It is a shame that Enterprise was never able to deliver the second batch of the Topaline Sickness vaccine to Angel One. I reviewed the reports and your vaccine really helped that colony prosper. More so, in overseeing one of the labs where the vaccine was replicated, I know a great deal of work went into the production, and it’s a shame that without the delivery more people might die needlessly.   
  
And look, here I am rambling on about vaccines and credits when there are far more important matters at hand. You are in my thoughts, Leonard. Should there be anything you need, please just let me know. I promise to not tell a word of it to Jocelyn either.  
  
Warmly,  
Nancy   
  
  
 **Republic – July 2272**  
While it didn’t happen as soon as he would have liked, it didn’t take that long to secure a live feed with the only other person in universe who might understand his approach to the current situation. Never in his life did McCoy think he would find any sort of comfort in seeing Spock on the other side of the viewer screen, but McCoy’s life seemed to exist in the planes of the improbable anyway.  
  
McCoy didn’t give Spock anymore time than his customary greeting before he jumped right into the issue at hand. “I don’t think he’s dead.”  
  
“While not entirely logical, I am inclined to agree with you.” Spock regarded him with a critical eye and if that wasn’t the most unnerving thing he had ever encountered he wasn’t sure what else could be. “Doctor, there is no need to be anxious to ask me what you are about to as you already know my answer. Nyota and I have placed our request to rejoin Intrepid as soon as possible.”  
  
“But what about Grayson?” (And it was only then that he thought of Carol and David Marcus somewhere in the world trying to make sense of the news. Would she tell him now? And what good would it do another Kirk offspring to have a dead father’s legacy to worry about…but no he wasn’t dead, couldn’t be dead.)  
  
“We are leaving him in the capable hands of Ambassador Selek until Starfleet is able to process our request to equip exploration class ships to accommodate families.”   
  
McCoy nodded. Perhaps at another time (and certainly with Jim) there might have been some banter over them all having families of some sort to watch over – families who might one day be the next generation taking on the stars.   
  
However, the doctor had a plan he needed to put in action and if all the bullshit he had to go through to get some residents aboard Republic was bad, he had no illusion that it would be any easier to see if he could get them posted to Intrepid for the next set of rotations.  
  
  
 **Enterprise – June 2272**  
Sometimes what the crew didn’t know couldn’t hurt them. Or at least it wouldn’t make things any worse, because life support running out would kill them whether they knew it or not. However, until that point it was better to have everyone focused on his or her task and remain unaware of the clock slowly ticking down in the captain’s head. Only the senior officers needed to know and even then only the ones that Jim felt could handle the news knew how bad things really were.   
  
Jim spent majority of his waking hours down in engineering because he wasn’t too helpful anywhere else. His shirt may have been gold, but he could have easily worn a red shirt and gone on to be just as great. He might not have had the natural talent with machines like Scotty did, but he did have a certain fluency and comprehension of how things worked in general that surprised many of the ensigns.   
  
There was also a sort of Zen in being able to crawl through the Jeffries tubes and tinker with pieces of his girl. And when his hands were preoccupied it gave that supposedly genius brain of his time to synthesize all the information swirling about and uncover the improbable. Sometimes it happened just before he fell asleep or just when he was waking up, certainly a few times during sex, but largely when his was physically engaged in some simple activity. It wasn’t an insult to anyone. It was just how the mind of James T. Kirk worked racing through hundreds of seemingly unconnected things at once until something fell into place.   
  
What he was doing then, checking wire connectivity as they worked to reroute systems from the damaged decks, would have been just the ticket if his brain weren’t already muddled with lack of sleep and too much stress. Too many lives were on his shoulders and this time he was honestly afraid he wasn’t going to find the solution.   
  
When he was forced to return to his quarters to keep his uncompassionate CMO appeased he didn’t sleep. Instead he spent the time reviewing specs and fiddling with the system on the back end. It had been all sorts of childish pranks in the hopes maybe if he altered the codes to boost the receiving signal not only would their reach be extend, but it would also clog up any navigational system of passing ships within range. Not that he had any luck, but it was worth a shot.   
  
“Scotty,” he shouted down the walkway, “I think I might have something here.”  
  
Far from the person to ask how high when told to jump, after nearly fifteen years Scotty knew Jim well enough to understand that this something was probably not too far off from the solution they were all desperately searching for.  
  
It took Scotty a few minutes to crawl into the space where Jim had dutifully been working away. “Alright, captain, what did you find today?”   
  
“I think that coil is bad, but I’m not sure what these readings mean.” Jim shifted so he could hand Scotty the scanner to look at.   
  
Scotty glanced at the screen, tapping at it a few times to pull up other reports to compare the data against. It couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds before a huge grin fell across his face. “Oh laddie, I could kiss you.” It was all he could do to contain his excitement, which given the fact that any grand gestures or true exuberance would probably end with Jim hit in the face was a good thing. “This will work beautifully, just divert from the damaged parts, stop them from gumming up the works all together and we might be able to get some more time from the girl yet.”  
  
Only Jim wasn’t fully listening to Scotty anymore. However, he had spent years training any obvious distraction from his face and really only an expert in Jim (namely Bones, sometimes Spock, and quite surely Uhura) could tell that he wasn’t actually paying attention. “Something’s not right,” he said when it became clear that Scotty was waiting for some sort of response from him.   
  
“Well, no, captain, that coil there is blown, but that’s actually a good thing because if we duplicate that with those circuits…”  
  
Jim shook his head, not bothering to let Scotty finish because he was fixated on this point now and the talk about coils wasn’t important. “Not with the circuits, with this whole thing…it’s just not adding up.” Although he was being disturbingly vague about it, but that was because the pieces were still falling into place even as he spoke.   
  
“Captain?”  
  
“I mean we’ve been patrolling this area for years now. The last time we came across a Romulan vessel they weren’t exactly friendly, but they weren’t lining up to slice me open and take my remains back as some great spoil of war.” Which was a win in the book of Jim Kirk, especially when he didn’t trust the current CMO as much as he trusted Enterprise’s prior, but that level of trust was never something he imagined he could replicated. “Things have been pretty good with the Romulans for a while. There has to be something else, something gumming up the works, causing trouble.” Jim shifted toward the small opening to crawl back out. “If you don’t need me here anymore, I should head back up to the bridge.”  
  
He didn’t wait for an answer. He was the one running the show, so he didn’t need permission from his officers, but often asked in a show of respect for them and what they did. After all a captain was only as good as his crew.  
  
Jim didn’t exactly race through the corridors because that certainly would have caused a scene, but he didn’t linger to converse with the passing crewmembers like he usually might have. And really no one would hold it against him, they may not have known, but they probably had a good idea of the dire straights Enterprise was in.   
  
“O’Haggerty!” Jim shouted as he stepped onto the bridge. “I need you to start digging through subspace transmissions leading up to the attack for unfamiliar encryptions.”  
  
“Captain?” The lieutenant slid out from under the console to gape openly at the request. “I had thought priority was to get basic communications systems back online?”  
  
“The sooner we get the systems up and running the better, but I have a hunch on this one. Assign Krebbs to pick through our recordings.” Jim walked over the communications station, some small part wishing that he had Uhura’s aural sensitivity to do this, but Krebbs was nearly as good.  
  
O’Haggerty pushed himself to standing, wanting to be able to look Jim in the eye as they had this conversation. “Captain, the only ships in range have been Romulan. I doubt anything interesting would show up.” Unlike everyone else on the bridge watching them, he knew exactly how bad things were and that was exactly what he was saying without words. Well, it was probably more along the lines of ‘respectfully you have lost your mind and we don’t have the time or energy to placate your whims.’  
  
But Jim ignored that because even if they were whims (which this certainly was not), they were his orders. “Then prove me wrong, lieutenant.”  
  
He stood there until he heard the ‘Aye, Sir’ and headed back into his ready room to start reviewing some of the recordings himself. Despite being able to speak a handful of different languages, Jim had never cared enough to really delve too deeply into the world of linguistics. Still he could spend a few hours seeing if he could find anything. And if not, well, it was just time he should have been sleeping anyway. 


	4. Made a Mess Out of Me

**Enterprise – July 2272**  
There were dozens of things he could have been doing at that moment. Dozens of things he should have been doing just then. Certainly there was something more important than sitting at his desk staring at the two rings in front of him. And to the world as it were that was all he was doing, sitting there frozen afraid to make the decision he needed to make. That was the true price of captaincy – the burden of 481 lives resting firmly on his shoulders because they were all his responsibility.   
  
Of course he wasn’t just sitting there. Although inactive save the slight movement of fingertips tracing over familiar yet foreign pieces of metal, his mind wasn’t still. The mind of James Tiberius Kirk was never still, no matter the time of day or desires of the man in question his mind was always racing light years ahead of him on dozens of different tracks at once, processing things without requiring them to make any real sense.   
  
The problem was that he knew what he had to do. He had known what he had to do since Scotty sent over the final engineering reports just fifteen minutes ago. That wasn’t the problem. No, the problem at hand was in part convincing the crew to go along with it, but also those two rings sitting on his desk.  
  
He had made a promise or rather given a warning nearly two years ago. It was one he fully intended to keep – one he had been making steady progress toward keeping until the rules changed. Now, they were dead in the water. The game might as well be over for him.   
  
“Now or never, Kirk,” he said in a long exhale. Jim pulled out-of-date dog tags from under his shirt and unclipped the ball chain necklace. He barely smiled at the still crisp imprint that listed his more serious allergies, before slipping both of the rings onto that chain. They belonged together. If nothing else the last four years had taught him that. It was a tragedy that he would never know if Bones agreed too. Jim did up the chain again and tucked it back under his shirt.   
  
He may not have been ready, but the time to hesitate was over.  
  
It took more work than normal to put on the captain hat and walk out of his ready room. As the doors slid open the bridge crew turned to look at him. They were really in no better state than he was. None of them had really slept over the past two weeks, but they all stumbled forward because they had no other choice.   
  
The bridge had seen better days. There were still wires all over the place, metal plating covering the view screen where it had fractured. Only three-quarters of the stations were functioning to some extent. Even the back up life support was failing.   
  
Commander Riley approached him as if to speak. Jim could see the heavy lines on his face, the not quite healed burn marks on his neck, exhaustion hinted at in every movement. Rather than engage him, Jim shook him off and settled into the rickety captain’s chair.   
  
Jim cleared his throat before he started a ship wide announcement. “This is your captain. I am not going to lie to any of you, because most of you have a good idea of how bad things are right now. They are going to get worse. Our ship is at minimal capacity, communications are out, and the warp cores are still off line. It’s only a matter of time until one of the half dozen Romulan ships looking for us right now is successful and if they don’t find us, our life support systems won’t last forever.”  
  
Maybe he should have kept some truths to himself, but it was time that the crew knew the truth, not to panic them, but in the off chance that having all of the necessary information might result in the synergy of a miracle. “In our attempts to repair the damages all we have done is managed to keep the girl from bleeding out completely. She will hold, but if we do not act I cannot guarantee this for too much longer.”  
  
Although he didn’t want to look at the completely still people around him, he needed to meet their looks. Jim Kirk needed to assure them and even himself that while things were bad right now, he was not running, but rather preparing for a fight that he intended to win – even if that win came at a great personal cost.   
  
“Enterprise has seen us through so much. I know she will see us through the upcoming confrontation so that you may continue on.” He paused, diverting his eyes to the empty space between his chair and the helm. “In order to salvage victory from this, I will be taking the Galileo out of the safety of the asteroid and beyond the enemy ships to send out rescue beacons to the Starfleet ships I know are out there looking for us right now.” Jim paused shaking his head. He was his father’s son after all. “I guess what I am trying to say is that I am finally going to live up to the legacy.”  
  
It was a joke that really only he chuckled at, but it was for him anyway.  
  
The pause was just long enough for the people on the bridge to process what he said and start the motions of protest. Those protests would fall on deaf ears. He was the best man for the job, the only person he would ask and trust with the task at hand. He held up his hand to stop their chatter. Nothing was going to change his mind. “Only I plan to do one better because I’m saving the ship too.” Jim could see their hesitance over the plan, but at the same time knew it was their only hope. “I will need everyone else to work diligently to get critical defensive systems back online. Full orders will be sent out to your superiors within the hour. Godspeed.”  
  
Jim Kirk was 39 years old, a full lifetime of service to the Federation comfortably behind him, and this would be just one more thing he gave – his life in exchange for over 400 others. A few years ago he would have thought nothing of it, his body belonged to Starfleet and he would give and give until there was nothing left. However, now he wanted to belong (again) to something or rather someone else and without anyone to take what he gave, it would go once more to service.   
  
Reaching up he pressed his hand over his chest. How he wished that jewelry could have truly wound up being chains. He wanted to be rooted firmly to the ground. Jim Kirk wanted bones like iron – or maybe he just wanted Bones to yell at him, to roll his eyes and force him to think of something else because he was too important and his crew was better than some bullshit self-sacrificing scheme. Except that crew, the one who repeatedly did the impossible because they loved him, would die for him because he would have died for any of them in a heartbeat had crews of their own to look after. His current crew, as great as they were, still saw him as a hero and a legend. And unfortunately for Jim Kirk the hero was going to die in this one.   
  
Really, the only thing left to decide was whether it was better to leave behind a widower or a twice-divorced man. (Even if they were broken either way.) At least for now he could be a coward and a hero in the same breath for a little bit longer.   
  
  
 **Enterprise – October 2270 to May 2271**  
Jim hadn’t been lying. It wasn’t easy to be on this ship with the ghosts of the best damn crew Starfleet had ever seen. However, his family had left the nest in order to create new homes and families of their own. Of course there was a sense of pride in seeing the people he remembered quite well as nervous ensigns or unsure lieutenants now as steadfast officers ready to take on the universe, but it wasn’t quite the same.   
  
He had a new crew to worry about, mission reports to file, first contacts to assure went smoothly, and dozens of aliens to assure remained on good terms with the Federation. Although the missions weren’t quite as full of the dashing heroics and excitement they had been the first two times there was still adventure to be found in the vast expanse of space.   
  
There was also a fantastic planet near Romulan occupied space ruled by women with Topaline mines the Federation would like the rights too. (And it didn’t hurt that the planet would also be a good tactical location to set up a small outpost and keep an eye on the Romulans.) That was his current mission – establish official political relations with the inhabitants of Angel One.  
  
Jim had been reviewing the mission report when the wall comm. chirped. “Captain, I have a message for you from Intrepid.”  
  
Jim paused setting aside his PADD. He hadn’t realized Intrepid was in range. “Patch it through, lieutenant.” Although he sat up in his chair he didn’t bother to tidy up his desk or smooth the wrinkles in his uniform – Spock had seen him in just about every state.   
  
The grin that fell across his face as Spock appeared on his view screen was unavoidable. Kevin Riley, the Enterprise’s current first officer, simply never could balance him the way that Spock did, not that Riley was anything less than amazing at his job, he just wasn’t Spock. For as much as Jim had teased and prodded at him, he had honestly come to see Spock as a good friend and close companion.   
  
“Spock, you actually look happy.” His voice was bright, being interrupted from his work by Spock, especially a Spock who might even be considered happy, was not something he saw often these days.   
  
“Your observation is found, Jim,” said Spock. The corner of his lips curled just a little. “It would be accurate to say that I do find my current circumstance quite pleasing.”  
  
“Are you going to tell me or sit there and make me guess?” Jim would certainly be open to either option if only for the reaction his guesses would draw out of Spock.   
  
“As entertaining as it might be to hear your wild theories in regard to my current situation, I will alleviate the need and let you know that just this morning Doctor Morris confirmed that Nyota is six weeks pregnant.”  
  
That was the thing that hurt sometimes. The people that he considered his family had these fantastic lives that he knew so little about, but that was the price of a lifetime spent exploring the far reaches of the galaxy. Jim hadn’t even known they were trying for a child at this point. Still, he was enough of a diplomat to not allow his slight hurt to sully his excitement over the news. “Spock! I didn’t think you had it in you.”  
  
“I fail to understand your meaning as there is nothing in me,” he said in that perfectly dry pattern of speech, “Although there is an embryo gestating in Nyota’s uterus.”  
  
Jim just shook his head, deciding to continue anyway. “Daddy Spock,” he said quite liking the sound of it. “Do you think the kid will have your ears? And hey, I totally get to be godfather right? I’ll even teach the tyke the Zen of Jim, it will be epic.”   
  
On the other end of the screen, Spock paused unsure how to answer either question and rather than hear an answer he didn’t want, Jim didn’t give him a chance to answer. “But you’ll have time to consider that offer because I’m guessing your call isn’t purely about pleasure.”  
  
“You are correct, captain.” Spock instantly became more comfortable. Not that he was weary of Jim. It was just that Jim wasn’t always the easiest person for him to operate around when it wasn’t a constant interaction. “Intrepid has been ordered to accompany Enterprise during treaty negotiations as the inhabitants of Angel One can be rather…challenging.”  
  
And that comment earned Spock a hearty laugh because it was far too polite and entirely Vulcan. He had read the mission reports, while they were a matriarchal race (which was quite amazing in itself) they didn’t respond well to men in roles of power. Let alone cocky starship captains who were somewhat publicly married to a man – even if that was a complicated matter. However, Spock had managed to develop a repertoire with some of their science officers three months ago when Intrepid came across one of their scouting vessels.   
  
It might have felt like Starfleet was giving him a babysitter because he was Jim Kirk. But he had dealt with that feeling for most of his career and at least this meant he would get some time to see Spock and Uhura in person.  
  
“What’s your estimated time of arrival?”  
  
“We are planning to dock with Enterprise in six point four hours. Lieutenant Commander Uhura will be sending over my personal logs about the inhabitants for your review. I would suggest you read them closely.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, I’ll do my required reading. Dinner in my quarters when you dock, no excuses. Kirk out.”  
  
Treaty negotiations with Angel One were challenging if not near impossible until Spock’s team found that they had incidents of Topaline Sickness with some of their miners that was causing infertility. From there it was easy enough to alter the vaccination to their species and have the golden ticket to ensure the Federation would get exactly what they wanted. It was almost too easy.   
  
But then again, after falling easily back into old habits and routines with Spock maybe that was how things were always supposed to work. It was invigorating to feel like the old team had come back together even if it was still missing a good number of them. In a way it felt like finding your old blankie in the back of your closet. Jim hadn’t realized how much he truly missed Spock (or Uhura for that matter) until he was seeing them off once it was all said and done.   
  
The world was going on without him. Hell, even Bones was dating again, like seriously dating it sounded like from their few conversations. And he wasn’t jealous about it, he wanted Bones to be happy and knew first hand that Bones was sort of a disaster on his own…but then again he wasn’t too good on his own either.   
  
So, maybe it wasn’t the brightest of ideas to invite Scotty to his quarters that evening to enjoy one of the better batches of whiskey from the still down in engineering. The pair were just lounging his quarters in a way not unlike what he used to do with Bones, but with a different atmosphere for as brilliant as Scotty was there was absolutely no sexual attraction to the man. (And he knew that the same went the other way too.)  
  
“There were some lovely lasses down there,” said Scotty, “quite a few seemed quite found of you.”  
  
“They all love me, Scotty, that’s part of the Kirk charm,” said Jim. Only the words didn’t quite fall in that effortless way they should, but rather with a subtle moroseness that didn’t suit him or the moment.   
  
“Oi! None of that while drinking my good stuff.” Scotty made a theatrical move to take Jim’s glass way from him that didn’t quite work. Not bothered by his failure, he just refilled his own glass, leaning back with a certain content falling on his face. “One of them, Katherine I think, wanted a tour of Enterprise, course I indulged her…and boy did some of the coils and engines turn her on. The ladies from Angel One are something else.”  
  
“I guess.”  
  
“This is about the doctor, isn’t it?” He asked in the way that clearly said he didn’t really want to know and Jim heard it. The problem was that he didn’t really have anyone else he could talk to. Well, he could talk to the psych officer, but she would just analyze everything he said and there were some things that Starfleet really didn’t need to know about.   
  
“I was wrong.” He said finishing off his glass. “But it’s just that whatever I say, I believe and I believed that it was right to leave him, you know? Bones is happy back at Medical doing good not having to worry about me. But I think he does…I mean I worry about him too. And yeah, I still love him, he told me that…nearly said it back…I just don’t think we’re ready yet like cookie dough that’s still baking.”  
  
But hell, he didn’t even really know what love was until he found himself in something that looked and felt a lot like it. And it was love, he knew it had been love and it still was love. “I just didn’t know before, how it all worked, but I get it now or at least I think I do. Just like the ship…love might keep her flying but it’s not just love, it’s you and your team working your asses off, it’s the crew that inhabits her…it’s not easy to stay afloat, but when she does…god, it’s beautiful.”  
  
“Right on, lad, you are finished here.” And this time when he moved to take away Jim’s glass he actually succeeded. “And I should go make sure my crew is keeping the lady afloat.”   
  
The thing was that Jim wasn’t really drunk – he didn’t really get drunk anymore because it was unfitting of a captain, and really not that fun without Bones to grumble at him. But he was lonely, especially after seeing how this elusive love thing worked with Spock and Uhura (how it always seemed to work) enough for them to be calm and happy over the prospect of starting a family and not giving up their life in space either.   
  
He had asked Uhura about it and her response had been so perfect it only bothered him more. She had told him that, “The fear of losing something, isn’t enough for me to stop wanting it and working to achieve it. Maybe you need to realize that, Jim.”   
  
Any maybe he did, but he had months to stew with those thoughts about his own fears, about what it meant to make it work while puttering around the quadrant being the good little ambassador Starfleet expected of him.   
  
Despite all the good he did, it wasn’t until May – a full month after the birth of Grayson that he was able to put in for shore leave to visit the happy family. And they were happy. Plus the not all that scary baby totally had Spock’s ears and Jim learned the hard way that Spock did not take kindly to Jim running his fingers over those tiny pointy tips – but they were just so … fascinating.   
  
“I still can’t believe you two are actually going to take an extended leave,” he said, “Space won’t be the same without you in it.”   
  
“While we will no longer be aboard a starship, we will still be in space, Jim.”   
  
Jim had been about ready to respond when Grayson started crying again. Cute as they could be, babies were apparently quite demanding and this one was particularly finicky about his sleep schedule. While Jim wasn’t immediately bothered by the departure of the happy parents it did leave him in the same room with Bones. Jim hadn’t been alone with the other man in person since they had the not getting divorced sex. That fact alone made the alcohol available a viable option in order to make this interaction easier. Still, neither was as drunk as they were pretending when they did start to really talk.   
  
"You know, I have one of those." Jim was sprawled on the sofa, acutely aware of the extra space between him and Bones. "Well, not quite that like, but bigger like yours."  
  
"What are you on about?" Bones asked as he refilled their glasses.   
  
"A kid, Bones. I have a kid who doesn't know who I am and will never have to live up to the Kirk legacy because he doesn't think it belongs to him."  
  
"You never did either." Bones didn’t visibly hesitate or stutter. They may not have been together, but it was clear that to some extent (when he could) Bones would always be Jim’s personal psychiatrist and this was clearly a piece of an issue that had been eating at the younger man for a while. He handed Jim back his glass and fell a bit too easily onto the sofa next to Jim, just an inch away from allowing their knees to brush against each other. "What's his name?"  
  
"David Marcus. He’s about 18 now, attending Stanford." The natural thing here was to lean into Bones and take what comfort he could from the man, but he wasn’t sure if he was allowed that anymore. "I found out about him three years back, Carol sends me updates on him about once or twice a year."  
  
However, Bones made the first move and bumped Jim’s shoulder with his – just like he made the first play almost a year ago now. In the big scheme of things it was nothing, but for them after maybe it was everything. "Why don’t you talk to him?"  
  
"I saw what it was like. Watching you with Joanna.” Still unsure if he should, Jim inched close enough to Bones to feel the heat radiating from the other man. “Shit, he went 15 years without knowing who his dad his, what good am I to him now when half the time I'm across the galaxy playing ambassador?"  
  
Although he didn’t look over, he could feel Bones shaking his head next to him. “I might not have done everything right by Joanna, but I wouldn’t trade the few and far between conversations we did have for anything.” Bones then turned to look right at him with a look that Jim hadn’t seen in a very long time, but that was his Bones right there. “I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t easy, but Jocelyn was taking care of her and I had a ship that needed me.” His voiced dropped as he finished. “I had you too.”  
  
And that more than their subspace communications, more than the way they spoke without ever having to say anything was enough to rip the bandage off and for them to begin a real dialogue about what went wrong. Not all of the details were hashed over or ripped apart, but the major ones were brought to the surface and examined with calm tones and healing. Jim almost didn’t believe it was happening, here in Spock and Uhura’s house, but they always had curious timing.   
  
“Near the end I tried to convince myself that we didn’t love.” The words were out of Jim’s mouth before he realized. Bones tensed beside him. “But I was wrong. It was just that I felt my whole life that whoever I loved, I left behind because it was easier than watching them walk away.”  
  
But maybe, just maybe he needed to start living like he was loved because it was clear that he was. Things might not be like they were before, but it was clear that Bones still cared for him.   
  
“I guess what I am trying to say is that I’m not afraid anymore either and I want you know that I’m coming for you, Bones." And there it was, that classic Jim Kirk smirk, before he pushed himself off of the sofa to go find Spock. It was well passed time that Bones was left with serious thoughts.   
  
Jim knew he had a long to go before he could be with Bones the way he wanted to and really the way Bones expected him to – but Bones had a similar journey ahead of him too. He wasn’t going to lose in order to win anymore, but it was time to fight because he wasn’t going to let Bones go. (And maybe Bones would fight for him too.)  
  
  
 **Intrepid – September 2272**  
By the time fall was arriving back on Earth’s northern hemisphere, McCoy had no clue what to make of what he was doing. He was nothing more than a desperate man seeking water in a desert. Or maybe he was more in love with an idiot who saw his body as an asset rather than something to be cherished or loved than he wanted to admit. (Or maybe, just maybe he was both because the two weren’t that different.)  
  
Command had to know what he was doing when he requested the new ship posting, but they didn’t try to stop him. Not directly at least. Pike had pulled him aside and told him in no uncertain terms that despite whatever else he was up to he better damn well be teaching the doctors under his supervision and filing his reports on time. (Pike might have also told him that if Jim was still out there he wasn’t to come back to Earth without the man in tow. And Pike said it in such a way he was sure that Jim Kirk was still out there – so he wasn’t the only too hopeful idiot in Starfleet.)   
  
Bones had been on Intrepid since mid August performing his job as a teacher under the command of Spock. Spock and his brilliant science team, whose current research sent Intrepid in search of habitable worlds near the Romulan Neutral Zone not far from where Enterprise had projected the Galileo to have gone, which was a small coincidence rather than altering of Starfleet orders. After all Spock was hardly the type to allow emotional ties to lead to insubordinate behavior.   
  
It had been weeks of dead ends and planets that couldn’t really support any sort of life even temporarily, but he didn’t give up hope. He couldn’t give up hope, because McCoy knew it had to be only a matter of time. The universe wasn’t going to allow Jim to die unless McCoy could be left with the resounding feeling that if he was better, faster, or a dozen of other things Jim wouldn’t have died.   
  
Not that anyone on board saw any hints of his hope. The crew and the doctors under his supervision just saw the grumpy bastard McCoy slowly becoming more intolerable with no Chapel or Jim to help keep him in check. But he filed his reports on time and made sure his residents were learning, even if his teaching through anger became a bit angrier. And he was certainly adding a heart attack and a whole write up of other stress related diseases that Jim knowingly and unknowingly gave him along with the grey hair.   
  
It didn’t even get particularly bad until Intrepid received a hail from Montgomery Scott who shared the cliff notes version of the missing days of Enterprise under Jim’s command including bits and pieces from his last words. And that just fueled McCoy more, causing him to take things to a whole new level.  
  
The betting pool started soon after that. Various members of the crew putting in for what day McCoy would finally lose his control and explode. And it would have been in only two more days if Spock hadn’t called him down to geology to share the most recent set of findings.   
  
“This better be damned good, Spock.”  
  
Not even Spock was free from feeling the stress and anxiety that McCoy radiated off him as he stomped through the ship. (But he was anxious to find Jim as well. Spock was just better at dealing with it than McCoy was.) There would be words about McCoy’s attitude later, but at the moment Spock hoped the news he had would work to dissipate it a little.   
  
“Doctor, I have confirmed that the derelict space craft our surveying scans found yesterday is Galileo from Enterprise. Furthermore, we have been able to track one human life form within a three mile radius of the shuttle for the past twenty-four hours, although we have not been able to maintain a continuous reading.”  
  
That was what Spock said, but what McCoy heard was perhaps the most beautiful three words in the universe: We found Jim.  
  
Even as Spock went on to assure that doctor that was not the case – just as he had done before with all of the other planets, McCoy wasn’t listening. After all how could it be anyone but Jim? It wasn’t like this part of space or the planet they were orbiting was a prime location for great camping adventures.   
  
Within a few hours his mood completely turned around. It was more than enough to further terrify the residents. Not that he could blame them, a smiling McCoy was a lot like a unicorn – if unicorns breathed fire and ate new born babies or so the rumors had people believe were true.  
  
But Jim was found, a shuttle would be going down in the morning after a few more scans were completed and then the world could be as it was supposed to be. McCoy was just supposed to needlessly worry about Jim, he wasn’t actually supposed to finagle an unofficial rescue mission where if one thing went wrong it would surely result in censure and that was just the beginning.   
  
In light of the good news, McCoy had even accepted the offer to join Spock and Nyota for dinner. Normally it would be any excuse to avoid them because his relationship with Spock was tentative at best, but after this McCoy knew that wouldn’t be the case anymore. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he truly understood the Vulcan, but he could appreciate the finer nuances enough to not feel like the natural order between them was to constantly clash against each other. Of course having Nyota there as a buffer instantly made things better because ever since their first tour she had been a good friend.   
  
It was no doubt out of that friendship she pulled him aside as Spock was clearing the table. She placed her hands upon his, silently asking for his full attention as she imparted her wisdom. From other people, McCoy may not have even done them the service of pretending to listen, but he knew better. Nyota Uhura was not a woman who could be easily placated. She was also known to be able to say exactly what he needed to hear at any given moment.   
  
“Relief isn’t joy, Len, just a distant second best,” she said. Her words so simple and direct despite the millions she had at her disposal. Without context it was something worthy of a fortune cookie, but said when she did it home hard.   
  
And truly he couldn’t help but concede that she had a point. As relieved as he was that tomorrow they would send a landing down to retrieve Jim, he knew it wouldn’t be enough. But perhaps it could be the beginning. He and Jim might have torn each other to pieces at times, but that was in the same way young boys teased and picked on the girls they liked. They had needed time to grow up that much was clear.   
  
Bones wasn’t one to claim he was all whole and healed – or that he ever could be, but he felt ready this time.   
  
  
 **Unknown Planet AKA Maru – July to September 2272**  
He did it. That was all that mattered. A nearby Starfleet ship would pick up Enterprise and his crew would be saved. Sure, he might be remembered as a hero, but what did that matter to him? His crew was safe. His ship was safe. That was what the captain did when he refused to go down with his ship. Everyone else would get the chance at life – long lives full of so many more adventures, and he would take the desert for as long as it would allow him.   
  
The Galileo hadn’t landed as much as it crashed onto this planet leaving him with nothing more than a basic survival kit and a few rations. It wasn’t a lot, but Jim Kirk had lived with less – he had his childhood to thank for that. And if the planet’s atmosphere didn’t outright kill him, he might even be able to make a sort of life for himself for a few years, live off the land without a soul to bother him. He supposed there were worst ways to go.  
  
For the first cycles of what passed for a moon, it was almost exciting. There were canyons to climb, small game to hunt and kill and literally a whole world in front of him with no signs of humanoid life forms.   
  
Once he figured out how to find water it was nice, until it became unnerving. When he started see shadows in the distance or hear pieces of conversations from a past he knew was his but didn’t quite feel was right, he started to lose the will to keep going.   
  
Although it had to be approaching fall or maybe winter back in San Francisco, it was endless summer in the hemisphere of the planet he landed on. The days were getting longer, the hot sun beating down on him making everything so much harder. More than once he considered venturing further away from the remains of the shuttle, but there was no guarantee that what he would find would be better than what he had.   
  
It wasn’t so much of a loss of adventure, but rather the absolute settling of realism. If he was going to die, it was best to do it within a few clicks of his ship because it was the friendliest thing he knew of on this unbeatable planet.   
  
It wasn’t long before the plants he ate to sustain him started to wilt. And even trying to supplement his diet with the moss and smaller plants, it wasn’t enough. Hunger became a constant for him, bad enough to make him want to do nothing but sleep, but left him far too distracted to allow for any measure of rest.   
  
He had lost count of the days then, they all seemed to blend into one another. It could have been forty-two days or it could have been eighty-eight. It all felt the same to a man who was starting to think that hope was nothing more than a word fools threw around.  
  
Jim Kirk ready to lay down his life until someone entered the range of shuttle’s radar. But even then the beep was nothing more than his death moan because he was never getting off this miserable rock. 


	5. Place at the End of the Road

**Intrepid – September 2272**  
Leonard Horatio McCoy was a man about to snap. Yes, Jim Kirk had been brought back up to the ship. Yes, he had even technically been in one piece, but it was the wrong interpretation of the one piece rule he had with the captain. McCoy never really minded how many pieces Jim came back in, he only cared about if there were enough to put the man back together again. Of course he preferred to not have to do that at all, but he knew what kind of man Jim was.   
  
Right now, Jim was in bad shape. According to initial scans not only had his body been eating away at his muscle mass for days if not weeks, whatever he had been supposedly sustaining himself on was acting as a rather impressive barrier to prevent his body from processing any of nutrients they were feeding him. Really, it was a miracle Jim had managed to last as long as he did. (And Jim always thought McCoy was the one to create those.)   
  
Without Chapel or even Jim to tell him when he needed to take a break, McCoy kept fighting against those damn enzymes until the world started to blur and spin around him. Luckily, a good deal of doctoring was time spent waiting while treatments, especially experimental ones, ran their course. So, McCoy would settle in his chair next to Jim’s bed and pull out his PADD in order to appear like he was keeping up with his other duties. Although many times he would doze off for a little while.  
  
His weekly report for Medical was days overdue and already in his inbox he had no less than three e-mails of varying anger and sternness alerting him of the dire consequences. McCoy’s sleep deprived response at the time had been to laugh and simply dump them in the trash. He had nearly dumped the one after that, but there was something in the string of numbers used for the message title and sender that made him pause.   
  
The e-mail was a strange little series of puzzles that he mindlessly went through and answered because it wasn’t like there was anything better to do. Once he solved the last little puzzle his PADD went black and he was just about to cuss up a storm about piece of shit technology that always shorted out at the worst possible time, but then the screen flickered back on with a new file icon on his screen.   
  
Without thinking about it too much he double clicked the icon, which launched the log database. As that was running furiously in the background a small text message popped up for him: “Figured if anyone was going to see them, it should be you. Read them, delete them, bury it in a box, no other copies exist on the system anymore. – Jim”  
  
McCoy sighed. He looked up from his PADD to the man supine on the bed aside him. “Love you as I might, sometimes you’re a real bastard, you know that?” It was yet another trap that Jim Kirk had lain for him in the days before he went and tried to get killed. “You know it’s amazing that you can mange all this, but you can’t manage to off yourself the right way.”   
  
Not that he wanted Jim to excel in that area, but he was really starting to believe that if he ever really did outlive Jim his life would be splattered with notes and data packets from him for years to come, although this one seemed pretty final. Leonard McCoy now possessed the only copy of the personal logs of Captain James T. Kirk. Those weren’t usually something that made it to public record, but if history was any indication once you and most the people who cared about you were long gone privacy wasn’t really something that history cared about. Hell, Jonathan Archer’s personal logs were turned into a sort of memoir that made a pretty penny in the day. At least this way Jim managed to protect his.   
  
Of course in doing so, Jim had left McCoy in a rather peculiar place.   
  
Jim was so close, yet untouchable right now. He would pull through, but McCoy really just needed to hear that voice, needed something to remind him that Jim wasn’t dead. He would be okay and that was what gave McCoy real pause because it was an invasion of privacy. He was meant to know these things, but only in a situation where Jim wouldn’t have to deal with him seeing how his innermost thoughts really worked – although even without reading his personal logs he had a good idea. Still, a good idea and actually knowing were two very different things.   
  
It was after thirty-six hours with no noticeable improvement that his resolve to not invade Jim’s privacy went right to hell. It wasn’t like Jim wouldn’t do the same if he were in McCoy’s place. Although if he was being honest, it wasn’t like Jim didn’t already do so when they were both very much alive.   
  
  
 **Captain’s Personal Log – final entry**  
They think I am crazy. Hell, sometimes I feel crazy, but that’s what this will do to you. It might as well be the end of the world as far as I’m concerned. Or at least the end of a world, probably mine.   
  
Still, I can’t help the feeling that something isn’t right here. It just doesn’t make sense for the Romulans to attack when they are so close to reaching a new treaty agreement with Starfleet. Why would they blow it now? I keep trying to rack my brain about what else could be at cause…   
  
But that’s kind of how things work with me, isn’t it? Things are good until something just blows up in my face. Like Bones, hell, even like those women on Angel One despite Spock being there as a buffer…still, there was a cause before, there has to be one now.   
  
That’s why I asked O’Haggerty to dig through the logs. I tried going through them myself, there’s some odd feedback but not something I have the time or quite frankly the skill to sort through. I don’t think O’Haggerty’s doing it, but I won’t hold that against him. He’s scared. They are all scared. Me? I always knew I would die in space, just never thought it would be quite like this …likely to freeze to death before we actually run out of air or shot like a lame duck.  
  
It’s just those ships just didn’t move like Romulan ships. More like some kid playing Starfleet versus Romulans.   
  
Now I’m just delaying the inevitable. I know what I have to do. Even if I wish that it wouldn’t have to come to this, but we’ve run out of options.   
  
  
 **Intrepid – September 2272**  
That was where it ended. McCoy didn’t need to know where it began or even where the middles where. Maybe it was perverse, but he needed to understand what was going through the idiot’s head before he made an apparently moving speech and decided that in the big scheme of things his life didn’t really matter all that much.   
  
After that, the thought of reading the rest of the log was almost too much to bear. There were some things that better went unknown and maybe the depths of Jim Kirk’s mind were one of those things. But for as mysterious a place as that mind was, it wasn’t often wrong. As regularly as Jim found trouble, he found dozens of ways to get them out of it. The kid had good instincts. McCoy would be a fool not to follow them.  
  
He might have only been a doctor, but doctors were meant to advocate for their patients – and spouses were meant to stand by each other. Sitting up in the chair he reached over to the comm. system and plugged in Nyota’s extension.   
  
“Uhura here.”  
  
McCoy clicked again to turn on the video feed because there was something about looking at a person when you spoke to them, especially when you were looking for favors, that McCoy preferred. And McCoy looked exactly how he felt – like an absolute wreck, which was bound to earn him a few points with people who knew how to navigate around the grumpy façade. “I need you to do something for me, well for Jim too-“  
  
“Len.” She sighed. There was a lot of that going around these days. Maybe they were all tired, but he ignored her warning tone.   
  
“Can you access the last transmissions picked up by Enterprise during the attack? I think there’s something that we are missing.” It was a matter of access. Strictly speaking Nyota didn’t have that sort of access, but she knew enough people – had enough admirers really – to get just about whatever she wanted.   
  
“Len, Starfleet is already mounting for a defense after they pulled out of negotiations.”  
  
The trick was convincing her this was worth wanting. Or really letting her know that this wasn’t McCoy trying to hold on to some unobtainable object, but this was bigger than whatever stupidity that was he and Jim this week, although that was a part of his motivation.   
  
“Look, I don’t need a status report on the Federation politics.” That was a bit harsher than he intended. “I just need you and your wonderfully talented ears to see if you can pick up on anything off about the transmissions. If we are gearing up for war and I’m going to have to spend more years of my life patching up idiots, I’d like to be sure we’re fighting the right enemy.” Nyota looked at him for a long minute, before he remembered his manners. “Please?”   
  
“I would like to see whatever log or report that gave you this idea.” McCoy was about to protest, but sometimes in order to win he had to lose. It was just one entry – hardly anything too personal, but it was meant for him, not Nyota or anyone else.  
  
“I can’t do that, but it’s one of Jim’s logs – it’s probably in the public ones as well. He said he gave an order to Lieutenant O’Haggerty to dig through the transmissions just before he disembarked.”  
  
“Fine, but this means you’ll owe me.”  
  
And that almost caused McCoy to smile. “Don’t I always,” he said.  
  
McCoy knew he had put his task into the right hands when no more than eight hours later Nyota tracked him down in the medical bay.   
  
“Len?” She motioned him to the back office and he followed her. “About the project you asked me to look into. I found some interesting results.”  
  
She handed over the PADD allowing McCoy to skim the transcript containing the hidden transmissions she found. “The asshole was right. Of course he was right.” And that pulled a laugh from him, even from a coma James Kirk was finding a way to save the day. “C’mon let’s go tell Spock what we found.”  
  
Although they might not have always appeared to get along, there was always a mutual respect between Spock and McCoy. At the very least he knew that Spock would listen. The trick was then working around his logic to get him to do what had to be done. It certainly didn’t hurt to have Nyota on his side, not that Spock was inclined to show favoritism. Spock had always been too good at keeping his personal and professional life separate, but that didn’t mean that his partner always played by the same set of rules.   
  
“This is a very interesting conclusion, Doctor,” said Spock when it was all said and done. “However, I fail to find substantial evidence to implicate the citizens of Angel One as the perpetrators behind the attack on Enterprise.”  
  
McCoy knew it would come to this. It was just a few transmissions about a ship’s position. None of it absolved the Romulans of the attack, but it certainly changed the way McCoy was looking at the whole situation. And if he was any standard, he hoped that it would be enough for some other significant people at Starfleet to stand up and take notice. Admiral Pike would certainly be among those fighting in his corner – the man always was. The problem was motivating the people on board Intrepid to do the right thing.   
  
So it was only a matter of planting the idea with Spock to further investigate and then rerouting Intrepid back to that funny little planet on the edge of the Neutral Zone where McCoy’s cure had saved the population and made happy men out of the Federation tacticians.   
  
The journey would take two days, two long days stuck in a ship that was far too small for his liking staring at a ghost in his medical bay and trying to be a good teacher to the half dozen residents mulling around the labs and getting some practical experience. If this basic exploratory mission was anything like any of the ones Enterprise went on his little medical team was bound to get a good deal of experience fast.   
  
McCoy was asked to report to the bridge for when they dropped out of wrap, because this side mission was at his request. Which really meant that regardless of friendships, if something went wrong, it was McCoy’s ass that was on the line.  
  
“Look at that,” he said as the planets in orbital rotations around Angel came into view on the screen. “It’s a beauty of a system.” From the reports he knew that many of the planets were some version of hell on Earth, but from a distance they were lovely. However, the moment of aesthetic enjoyment was short live.  
  
Soon it was back to the electronic beeps and blaring of the helm. “Captain, I am getting multiple readings on the radar.”  
  
“Proceed with caution, helmsmen,” said Spock. McCoy found himself standing behind the captain’s chair, ignoring the feeling in his gut that something was wrong with this picture. He dismissed the feeling as the fact that Spock was in the chair, not Jim. Intrepid dropped down to her thrusters in order to maneuver around the various planets’ gravity wells and allow the long range sensors to do their work. As it wasn’t exactly an official mission, it was best for them to play it as safe by stayin under the radar as long as possible.   
  
“Captain, we have incoming.”   
  
Or maybe  _that_  was the feeling in his gut. The reality that the universe was indeed out to get him, but McCoy didn’t let it show. He might not be in his element, but he could pretend this was just some archaic form of exploratory surgery and nothing more. The only problem was the whole ordeal made him felt like a resident or worse an intern still fumbling to try to figure out the feel of a scalpel. But he had the best teachers then and the same was true now, he just needed to trust them.   
  
“Shields up and get the weapons system online.”  
  
It wasn’t the best the most extensive, but that was one of the good things that followed the Narada incident. All Starfleet vessels were now equipped with substantial weapon systems and tactical officers posted who knew how to use them. Technically there shouldn’t be any need for weapons on a purely scientific vessel, but the universe wasn’t a safe place anymore. Not that it had ever been safe to begin with, but it was significantly less safe now.   
  
“We have visual.”  
  
Spock ordered to put it up. He was annoyingly calm about the whole ordeal, which irritated McCoy every now and again, but right now he understood it. When things went wrong in surgery he didn’t freak out, he didn’t even pause, he just got even more quiet and worked twice as hard. With a scalpel in his hand was about the only time McCoy wasn’t going to run his mouth.  
  
Unfortunately, that wasn’t true for Spock.  
  
“Doctor, it would appear your so-called intelligence has put us in firing range of a Romulan ship – the very ship that may have disabled Enterprise.” How he had time to be sarcastic was beyond McCoy, but maybe this was a teaching moment. Or the more likely case was that Spock needed to redirect the bridge’s attention while the defense systems got on line, so they wouldn’t have time to freak out. “Did it offer any advice about such a situation?”  
  
Before McCoy even had the chance to consider a response a blast shook through out the ship, followed by the reports of shields at 90%.  
  
Perhaps a better man might have been able to play the role right, but there was a damn good reason why Leonard McCoy didn’t wear command gold and had no damn intention to do so. “Good god man, at least try to open communications with the damn ship and confirm it is Romulan and not whatever the hell we’re calling the people from Angel One.”  
  
The bridge, who had already been listening in on the exchange, completely stilled and waited for the reaction from Spock. McCoy crossed his arms over his chest, he was a rock now and he wasn’t backing down until there were answers. If it were the people from Angel One, they were going to get a piece of his mind and then some. And if it were the Romulans – well, that was just an old hat at this point.   
  
“Lieutenant Commander Uhura please hail the approaching vessel on all channels.” She nodded and immediately set to work. “Ensign Stevens fire a warning shot across the bow.”   
  
And just as quickly as it was disrupted the bridge fell back into working order making a stand against the believed Romulan vessel. They were sitting ducks, out here in the open, but what else could they do? Jim would know, so would Sulu or Chekov for that matter because those were two men well versed in the book of Kirk. McCoy had always been the nonbeliever when it came to this sort of stuff and how he wished that wasn't true right now.  
  
“They are not responding to our hails and it appears that all channels to the oncoming vessel are being jammed.”  
  
The ship trembled again, knocking anyone standing off their balance, and setting off a whole wealth of warning alarms. Intrepid wasn’t Enterprise, for as good of a ship she had to be, she wasn’t meant to go into battle and the Romulan ship was relentless.   
  
Spock went around the horn to have all stations report damages, which at the moment were manageable, but with their shields down that wouldn’t hold for long. For all the ways he might have died, McCoy really didn’t want to be blown out of space on some half-assed rescue mission he was responsible for and before he could even properly yell at Jim.   
  
Gripping the back of the captain’s chair, McCoy found his balance once more. Then he found himself speaking without really thinking about it first. “You need to reroute all power from auxiliary system to weapons.” Inside a hospital no one would have thought twice about his command, but this was not his domain. Not to mention it was risky as well to just go on the offensive and abandon all defensive strategies, but from what McCoy had gathered there wasn’t much of a choice.   
  
He just hoped he wasn’t wrong. And then he hoped twice as hard as Spock repeated his suggestion as an order. It was one thing to lose a patient on the table. It was a completely new reality to potentially lose hundreds of people with one decision.   
  
Intrepid altered her course to start attacking the oncoming ship from the side and McCoy might have forgotten how to breathe. Their ship, that felt far too tiny right now, was shaking, sparks were flying everywhere and he could almost hear the ghost of Montgomery Scott swearing up a storm about mistreatment of such a beauty. And he really wished that this ship had a version of Montgomery Scott to keep her in the air right now.   
  
By many accounts it was a fantastic slugfest between David and Goliath. The problem was try as the Intrepid did in space sometimes size and power did matter.   
  
The moment the helmsmen said: “Our main cannon is down,” McCoy knew it was over. A part of him wanted to run down to medbay and be at Jim’s side when the world ended, but what good would that do? Jim wouldn’t even know anything had changed, but the people here on this bridge? They would, they were alive and breathing, and maybe that was a little more important than the captain in the coma two decks down.   
  
“Do we have any chance at retreat?” McCoy asked, although he could guess the answer. They went all in on offense. The chance they were going to be able to escape now was not something he wanted to hear spoken out loud to the hundredth of a percentage.   
  
He closed his eyes. Maybe it would be over quickly. If they had a direct hit they might all be exploded into tiny little pieces – it certainly was better than drifting out in the vacuum of space. A person could survive up to almost two minutes floating in the black before they finally died and McCoy would much rather be red mist than floating in the abyss.  
  
McCoy was braced for the worst when suddenly everything stopped. The ship was no longer falling to pieces around him and he didn’t seem like he was about to die.  
  
“Report!”   
  
The helmsmen scrambled to make the controls in front of him work. “It appears that Excelsior just dropped out of warp and is firing upon the Romulan vessel.”  
  
Spock might have been too polite to say it, but southern gentleman or not, McCoy didn’t really have control over what he was saying at this point.   
  
“How the hell did Excelsior just drop out of wrap and save our asses?”  
  
Nyota turned around in her chair. “That would be my discretion.” Her voice was perfectly calm despite the sizeable cut she had on her face and burn marks on her uniform. “I had noticed that Sulu’s ship was in range and alerted him to our plan on the off chance that anything went wrong.”  
  
McCoy laughed at that. Maybe the universe didn’t entirely hate him. The rest of the bridge was looking at him like he was crazy, but he probably was so that was okay. As long as he was crazy and watching that damn Romulan ship be disabled it was fine.   
  
Once the ship was neutralized Excelsior hailed them and was Sulu a sight for sore eyes. “Looks like you guys found yourself in a bit of a bind back there, I hope that you don’t mind us jumping in the fray.” After an exchange between Sulu and Spock that might otherwise be entertaining, Excelsior was cleared to dock with Intrepid to allow the ships to share resources while they recovered.   
  
Just as it felt finished McCoy remembered something important. “Doesn’t Starfleet have an outpost on Angel One?”  
  
Spock and Uhura turned to look at McCoy. “You are correct, doctor, following treaty negotiations finalized by Jim and I, a small outpost was created.”   
  
“Well, then why don’t we see if we can get a hold of them? They might know more about this hell system.”  
  
Uhura tried unsuccessfully for a few minutes to reach the outpost, but each time she received no response. She reported such to Spock. The next logical step was to get visual. If the outpost was destroyed it was very likely the people of Angel One were guilty of war and possibly treason.   
  
Just then the comm. system lit up and Uhura pulled the live message to the big screen. The woman in front of them resembled what the myths and legends called an Amazon. McCoy had expected her to have a big booming voice to go along with her appearance, but her voice was a perfect mezzo-soprano.   
  
“Mister Spock, what a pleasure it is to see you again, although I do regret the situations in which we are meeting.”  
  
“By attacking a Starfleet vessel you are declaring war on the United Federation of Planets.”  
  
She laughed. It was a light tinkering sort of laugh that felt quite out of place given everything that had happened. “We have neither the desire nor means to attack any Federation vessel. Your sensors should confirm that the vessel that attacked you is Romulan.”  
  
Spock was no Jim, but he knew how to play the politics game. He just approached it from a different angle. “There is still the issue of why there is a Romulan patrol defending your system as well as our inability to secure communications with our outpost on your planet.”   
  
“Due to the location of our planet Angel One has often found herself in the middle of conflict between the Romulans and the Federation.” McCoy knew that. Hell, that was why Starfleet had wanted the planet. “It would seem that the Romulans did not take too kindly about the treaty we established, or the Topaline vaccine the former captain of Enterprise handed down to us, which has allowed an great influx in our population as well as our technology.”  
  
McCoy’s stomach’s lurched at that. His vaccine was involved again, but this wasn’t Dramia. He saved the people. He couldn’t control how the populations used it or how the rest of the universe reacted to that. Maybe he was playing God, but he certainly didn’t see it as that, the technology existed. He was only doing what he could.   
  
So rather than focus on that, he latched on to the way she described Jim. For someone who claimed not to be involved with the Romulans seemed to know what they were up to. “Former?” he repeated, stepping into the transmission area.  
  
“Oh look at you,” the woman said with honest excitement and curiosity in her voice, “who might you be?”  
  
Unfortunately, that was not was McCoy was looking for at that moment. He kept his arms crossed over his chest. “McCoy, Doctor Leonard McCoy, the man who designed that cure your population is thriving due to and life partner to Enterprise’s captain, James Kirk.”  
  
“Then you have our gratitude as well as our condolences, doctor.” She was unmoving, but still somehow gentle – in many ways the perfect diplomat. “While your pairing seems odd to us, we do understand that the loss of a partner is never any easy thing.”  
  
Before he could think any better of it, he snapped at her. “Well, Jim ain’t dead and even if he were, how the hell would you know about it?”  
  
Then there it was, that flash of guilt that told him she knew a lot more than she was letting on. McCoy raised an eyebrow and he could see out of his peripheral vision Spock’s was creeping up to do the same. “Well?”  
  
“I am not a murder. I was simply doing what I needed to do in order to protect my people.” McCoy’s stance softened a little. Rationally he could discern the difference between murder and having to let someone die. He had lived through that, had found ways to redefine what happened with his father. Still, he wasn’t quite ready to give this woman such an easy pass just yet. “The Romulans were prepared to slaughter our people and burn the land when they located your outpost. We had tried to contact your Federation, but were unable. A choice then had to be made. It was either a dozen aliens dead and their equipment handed over to the Romulans or an entire species. There is no solace in the knowledge, but we made sure their deaths were as painless as possible and their passing was honored.”  
  
It was all a complicated pile of politics and clearly not his place because he couldn’t really be bothered with this sort of thing. He was never much of a chess player. McCoy had never really cared about games, when he made moves they mattered and there wasn’t time for long thought exercises. “Well, you’re damn right that reasoning behind it doesn't make the killing any better,” he muttered to himself as he started off the bridge.   
  
If he stayed any longer he was going to make things worse for the crew and probably for himself. Besides he was needed elsewhere. (Or maybe he wanted to be somewhere else.)  
  
There was still work to be done, people to patch up, but for the most part that was something Excelsior was better suited for at this point. There was only one place that McCoy wanted to go and ultimately one place he would go – back to the medical bay.   
  
When he arrived Doctor Grace Keller was overseeing the patients and really just updating charts. “Sir,” she said coming to stop as soon as McCoy entered.  
  
“At ease, doctor,” he said too tired to be annoyed at idiocy of being a doctor in the armed services. “It looks like you have everything under control here, why don’t you round up the others in the lab and head over to Excelsior see if you can’t learn something from the crew over there.”  
  
Grace Keller was a good woman, and a brilliant doctor at that. Out of his little group, she was perhaps his favorite. She would easily go on to be a vital person on a ship’s medical team, especially with her keen ability to read people. However, she also knew when to hold her tongue, which put her just an inch above McCoy in that regards. She simply quirked a brow at him before finishing up her notations and was on her way.  
  
Once she cleared out McCoy was left alone in the medical bay with three patients and a nurse hovering around somewhere, which were easily things he could keep under control alone. The patients were stable and at this point there was really nothing more they could do other than wait.   
  
Letting go of another sigh McCoy settled down into the chair next to Jim’s bed. His color was looking a little better today, but there was still no sign he was going to wake up soon.   
  
“Fuck, Jim, I don’t know how you do it.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to unravel from the past couple of days that he went through. “I mean I deal with life and death all the time, but doctors we’re trying to fight it off, not weighing choices on whether or not we should jump into trouble. You just make it look so damn easy.”   
  
Now that Jim was in sight and the world was safe for a little while longer, he could finally feel the exhaustion setting in. Surely just a few minutes wouldn’t hurt any. He really was no good to anyone dead on his feet.   
  
It was just as he could feel the sweet relief of sleep upon him those goddamn sensor alarms went off indicating a patient was flat lining. Of course it was Jim’s bed. That was the universe kicking him square in the balls.   
  
“Son of a bitch,” he swore, jumping out of the chair. He wasn’t sure if he anything left in him, but he knew he had to try.   
  
  
 **McCoy’s Inbox – July 2272**  
From: Kirk, James CAPT   
Sent: 18.7.2269 0:01FST  
To: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Subject:   
  
Bones,  
  
So this probably isn’t the sort of communication you were expecting from me, but here it is and hey at least I’m not around to feel your wrath or hear you go on about how reckless I have been. But I wanted you know that it wasn’t recklessness. In the end I knew exactly what was I was doing and I didn’t want to do it, but you know me probably better than I know myself so of course I did it. I had to save them, Bones. And I’m not sorry for that.  
  
I am sorry for having to break the promise I made to you. I really had planned to keep it and I totally had some magnificent moves that were going to make swoon so hard you wouldn’t know what was hitting you.   
  
I never expected to be just like my parents but there it is – loyal like my dad and doomed to love one person until I die no matter the circumstances like Winona. I don’t want you to be like her, Bones. Don’t let it eat away at you until you don’t know who you are anymore. And yes, maybe I’m being awfully presumptuous, but I know you. Even if you don’t love me or love me anymore, you did love me and you have never handled that sort of loss well.   
  
I want you to go on, Bones. I want you keep going on and be happy. Be happy, Bones. Do it for me, or else I am pretty sure I’ll find away to come back as a ghost and haunt your ass and not in a ridiculous endless love sort of way, but in a creepy you better shape up or ship out sort of way. You have so much more you need to do, so much more that you can do, so you can’t give up because I went and got myself killed.  
  
Don’t ever give up, Bones. You have to promise me that.   
  
Besides the way I see it this elusive afterlife won’t be all that bad. From my perspective I’ll just be there a minute or two and then there you’ll be from some time decades later looking like you did that day we stumbled into your bed the first time, jammed toes, far too pointy elbows and legs that didn’t know where they wanted to go – because that’s how I’ll always remember you.   
  
So live for me, Bones, live long and happy years so you have plenty of stories to tell me when you get here.  
  
Always,  
Jim  
  
  
 **Intrepid – September 2272**  
Jim didn’t remember dying to feel this way or rather to feel at all. Death wasn’t that wonderful flash of all your best moments. It wasn’t some fantastic utopia. It was just nothing. People died, their brains dumped all the chemicals floating around in it and that was it. Jim Kirk had died dozens of times, sometimes flat lining on a bed in medbay, but just as often because some hostile alien thought it was necessary. Each time he had been pulled back from the nothingness by the stubbornness of Doctor Leonard McCoy.  
  
And that wasn’t like waking up from a strange dream. No the act of being brought back was violent, like his body being slammed into a concrete sidewalk. Jim Kirk had never been a particularly religious man – because what place did religion have when man explored the heavens? – but some part of him still believed that when he finally did die for real something would happen beyond an eternal nothingness.  
  
Not that he was sure this was it because really there was far too much going on for this to be dead. This almost felt like the ridiculous big fluffy clouds, the people he loved and lost happy again, and Bones – definitely Bones was in this thing that wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t quite living either. He felt like he was trying to sneak back into the screening room where his life was being viewed.   
  
Because while there was Bones, it was only that gruff voice that didn’t sound particularly happy, but then again Bones wasn’t the happiest of men. It was all “Good, god man, you can’t move him like that” and “the whole lot of you are morons.” But then in quieter gentler moments it was soft and pleading – “Not like this, Jim, not like this.”  
  
As far as being not quite dead went this entirely sucked. It felt like miles and miles of foreplay without any completion, touches with no end game constantly leaving him hanging. And he felt Bones, like some ghost passing through his not-life. Or maybe he was the ghost passing through Bones’s life because surely Bones would outlive him for years to come despite the things he might have said in the secrecy of their bed.   
  
It was one tripped out dream, but if there was one touch he knew better than any other it was  _that_  touch. Those just barely calloused but agile fingertips on his hand, and that thumb that traced tiny circles into his wrist.   
  
He knew that touch because sometimes he found himself longing for that touch.   
  
And it was no different now, it was fleeting – something like the voices that he couldn’t quite hold on to, but simply passed into his reality for spans at a time. Or at least that was the way it felt like for endless days until something changed.   
  
This touch came in stereo.   
  
“Jim,” his voice was hoarse, clearly in one of the softer moments after a length of angry grump. It trembled too in a way that Jim knew they had to be alone or it had to be bad, real bad. But then again if he was stuck here he knew it was bad for him – he just didn’t want it to be bad for anyone else. Especially not Bones. “If you don’t wake your sorry ass up right now, and I have to wake you up or bring you back to life again just to kill you, God help me I will.”   
  
And yet there was love in those words. He wanted to smile, he really did. Only he didn’t seem to have control of a body. He was just a host of not quite memories and a few sensory clues, but he had to be in his body because he felt heavy. The whole world felt heavy pressing down upon him – and in a small but pleasant after thought it was actually sort of chilly. So, even as he tried a futile mind game in getting a body he wasn’t sure he inhabited to smile he knew it would be far too consuming a task.   
  
Still, he must have gotten at least half way because there was he was again.  
  
“I know you can hear me, asshole.” The word had never been spoken with such endearment before and hopefully wouldn’t have to be uttered again. “Now, you just gotta open your eyes.”  
  
The ambient world around him became fuzzy around the edges. Some part of his brain told him that this was what feeling must feel like.   
  
There it was again, that touch – those hands constantly on his. It almost didn’t feel real because they didn’t do this, not anymore. Not in a long time. But this sensation made all the memories he used to fill his time in the abyss feel like cheap facsimiles, so this had to be the real thing.   
  
Keep talking, just keep talking, he chanted to no one and anyone who might be able to hear him, but the message was only for one person.   
  
“You made an absolute mess of yourself, trying to be a damn hero.”   
  
The motion shook through him with such force it probably wasn’t a good idea, but it wasn’t like he wanted to start laughing or even that he thought it would actually work. Dead men don’t laugh. It just started deep in his belly pushing out through the rest of him until that hallow sound echoed in an unfamiliar room.   
  
This was real. Bones was real. The too sterile smell of a medbay considerably smaller than Enterprise’s was real. He wasn’t dead.  
  
But he still didn’t open his eyes. He wasn’t ready for that yet on the off chance that this was exactly what the real afterlife was like. “Wasn’t trying anything,” he said once the painful laughter subsided. It took Jim a moment to realize that was his voice. How long had it been since he heard his own voice? “Just needed to keep everyone safe.”  
  
Then the best thing he never expected to hear again happened. Bones laughed. Bones laughed and the world began again because damn it he was going to live now, fuck what the universe insisted of being a Kirk.   
  
“Yeah, well, believe it or not, kid, to a whole lot of people, myself at the damn top of that list, you’re included in the everyone who needs to be kept safe.” He was going to live because Bones kept saying improbable things.  
  
Jim peeled open his eyes, allowing the world to slowly come back into focus because he needed to be sure his sense of touch wasn’t lying to him. He also really needed to see Bones, bags around his eyes, hair a mess and still the most beautiful thing he ever saw. It was probably better that he was stumbling over his words at this point because saying any of things running unfiltered through his head right now probably wasn’t a good idea. But even that Bones seemed to know.  
  
“And I know you want to have your piece, but what you need now is at least six hours of actual sleep rather than that fucking coma you’ve been in for the past week. So, sleep.” Bones squeezed his hand just a little tighter. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”  
  
Jim tried to squeeze back but his hands didn’t seem to want to cooperate, but at least could find one word. “Promise?”   
  
“Yeah,” he said, the smallest hint of a smile falling across his face. “I promise, kid.” Bones leaned over the bed and pressed a kiss to Jim’s forehead as he closed his eyes.   
  
The world could go on without him, as it often did, at least for a little while longer. 


	6. What We Were Created to Be

**San Francisco – October 2272 to January 2273**  
Jim Kirk had never understood his limits. At best he acknowledged things his body felt from time to time, but even then they were more like suggestions than hard and fast rules or stop signs. However, at 39 regardless of what he thought his own limits were didn’t matter worth a damn when his body just said that was enough.   
  
After months of barely sleeping and eating things he fought to keep down, his body just needed a few days, or even the weeks it took to get back to Earth, to recover.   
  
The problem was that once he got back to Earth, Starfleet Medical refused to clear him for any sort of active duty aboard a ship until he underwent at least two months of physical rehabilitation and his psych evaluations came back satisfactory. The only reason he didn’t put up more of a fuss about it was the simple fact that Enterprise wasn’t about to go anywhere with or without him. In fact the only thing that gave him pause when he got the news of his temporary grounding was the issue of where to stay because as far as Starfleet was concerned he had housing.   
  
“Don’t be stupid, Jim, it’s as much your place as it is mine,” Bones had said before he could even ask. “And at least this way I won’t have to worry about what trouble your fool head can get you into when you don’t have death and danger staring you down in every direction.”  
  
As much as Jim had said that he was coming for Bones, he really didn’t expect for it to be like this – for them to fall back into some sort of pattern without ever really needing to discuss it at great lengths. They had shared their lives before. It was too easy to do it again both of them busy teaching and Jim chasing after the status of his girl, which none of the Admirals wanted to tell him about one way or the other. The only noticeable difference between them was there wasn’t any sex involved, not that there wasn’t instances of supposedly harmless touching, and the two of them spending far longer in the head than they strictly needed, but neither wanted to broach the topic first.   
  
Not yet at least.   
  
It was late in November just as the holiday season was starting to get into full swing, although few were sure exactly what they were celebrating anymore, when Bones decided it was time to cross that bridge. They were just sitting in the living room each focused on their PADDs rather than the drum of the holoscreen in front of them helping to fill the silence.   
  
“You’re wearing both our rings on the chain,” he said like it might have been a request to change the channel or an ask to go get another beer. Only that wasn’t how Jim heard it. Jim heard it like he was staring down the barrel of a phaser aimed right at him for a clean kill.   
  
He set down his PADD and leaned back in the chair, trying to play it off. “Aren’t you asking me this question almost two months too late?”  
  
Bones didn’t blink. He just looked at Jim, quite able to wait the other man out to get the answer he wanted or rather a real answer at all. He might have been out of practice, but it wasn’t a skill that he would forget.   
  
Finally Jim sighed and tugged the chain out from under his shirt, allowing those rings to be on display for them and no one else – exactly as it should have been. “You always kept me grounded, Bones, gave me something to want to come home to. I don’t regret what we he had, but sometimes I do regret forcing you into the whole marriage thing. I just didn’t want to die alone and knowing that I would always have you, that I still do always have you...Well, it makes everything else a bit more bearable, even when you don’t like me.”   
  
McCoy shook his head. “I may not like you all of the time, but I still love you, kid.” Where he once might have leaned over to kiss Jim, he simply bumped their shoulders together and stood up from the sofa. “I was thinking Thai for dinner tonight,” he said continuing like nothing had changed.   
  
But as the chill of winter set in bringing them deeper into the spectacle of the holiday season, two men began to stitch their lives back together.   
  
It had started simple with the two of them falling asleep on the sofa together one Monday evening a few weeks later, PADDs clattering to the floor. Of course, McCoy had woken up after an hour and dragged a still asleep Jim back to his bed so he wouldn’t have to deal with Jim’s complaining in the morning. And rather than return to his own bed that evening, Jim just pulled him into his and that was it. McCoy always found that his more restful nights were when someone else was in bed with him and he couldn’t imagine it being anyone else.  
  
It was only a matter of a handful of conversations over whatever meal found them both in the same place at the same time for the second bedroom to go back to being the study as it had always meant to be. From that point their two lives became more and more intertwined in the privacy of their home, while the world continued on as it was.   
  
It was nice to finally have a place where they could figure how to be Jim and Bones and nothing else before having to head out into the world where the things the defined them weren’t so clean and clear.   
  
Then Jim received the official notification in the weeks leading up to the fortieth anniversary of the Kelvin’s destruction. Rather than a simple decommission, Starfleet wanted to retire Enterprise NCC-1701 and send her off to live out the rest of her days in a Federation museum. She was a historic vessel, who needed to be remembered for the generations to come. So that they might remember Captain James T. Kirk who would do anything for his crew despite the cards being stacked against him because for as much as he stuttered and stumbled he somehow managed to come out on top.  
  
That was everyone’s dream, wasn’t it? To assure that long after your life was over, people remembered you. Only that wasn’t how Jim Kirk saw it as he sat on the edge of the unmade bed on the fourth of January. For Jim, it was just another day for him to put on the boots and play cowboy for the Federation.   
  
Maybe the act would help him reclaim this day as Pike tried to assure him, but it wasn’t likely. Even forty years later it was still just the day his dad died to save him and his mom – the 800 other people only incidental to the two that mattered most. In his younger years it was the sort of day that might have caused him to disappear as the sun poked through the fog in the Bay trying to find some new way to un-write today’s pomp and circumstance. Instead this morning he woke up in a way he hadn’t for the most part of the past five years. It was to the feeling of Bones’s arms warm around his middle, lips pressing on his clothed shoulder comforting him even before his mind told him he needed it.   
  
They had stayed that way for a long while, limbs slow to move content simply tangled together in their sheets with lips and hands free to move as they wanted. There had been nothing overtly sexual about it. Each time McCoy traced lines on his skin he was silently healing wounds and atoning for things that didn’t truly belong to either of them. It was safe in their bed, wrapped together with the sunlight barely poking through the blinds.   
  
Despite the fact they may have wanted to, it wouldn’t be possible to stay in bed all day. There were ceremonies to attend, smiles to fake, and more than anything another remembrance day to live through.   
  
Bones had left Jim in bed so that he could shower fifteen minutes ago with the stern warning that he better be out of bed and seriously moving toward getting dressed by the time he was out. As much as he didn’t like Bones leaving him alone in their bed before he felt he was ready, it was what he needed. Just a few minutes to lie in his bed and pretend that he wasn’t going to get up today so he could just feel down right sorry for himself. And maybe cry a little with no one to witness it.   
  
He had done all that covered in the calming scent of Bones and the promise that whatever happened today he wouldn’t have to go through it alone. Jim scrubbed a hand through his hair, shaking off the last of his moroseness, but not quite ready to move.   
  
But then the light peaking through the still drawn curtains glimmered off something on Bones’s nightstand catching his attention. Not one to let things lay, Jim slide across the bed to investigate.   
  
“All right, Jim?” Bones asked, carding the towel through his hair as he walked back into the bedroom.  
  
Jim looked up from his dead stare at the medal in his hand. It was his first, the very one that he received along with his commission. It felt like a lifetime ago.  
  
“If you’re avoiding the dress golds because we both know you put on about twenty pounds since you came back, sitting there isn’t going to magically help you fit into them.” His voice stayed light as he pulled out his own dress uniform. McCoy still hated the thing, but today he wouldn’t make a fuss about it. Today he wanted to wear it and be able to stand with Jim as Enterprise was retired.   
  
Bitch and moan as he did about the bucket of bolts, McCoy knew Enterprise was the closest thing he would have to a home that was a place and not a person. Even if he had only been there for about a fifth of his life, that ship was the world to Jim, which made it just a bit more important to him.   
  
“Fuck you, Bones,” said Jim finally pulling himself out of his funk. McCoy could hear that it was forced, but right now he just needed to get them through this morning. He would properly tend to these wounds later when they had time. “I will have you know that I make forty look good, unlike some people.”  
  
McCoy turned to just look at him for a long moment. It was the sort of look that Jim wasn’t sure what to make of because it put him on edge, yet filled him so completely. “Yeah, you do,” said McCoy letting his drawl come on a little bit thicker than normal. Later, he promised himself, he would properly worship each and every inch – all the scars he knew, the ones he missed out on and all of the memories of scars that never were because he had been good enough. “So, what are you waiting for, kid?”  
  
And it was that endearment more than anything else he could have said that got an honest smile out of Jim and damn if he didn’t know it would.   
  
The two dressed in a companionable silence. There were hands reaching out to straighten lines or to fix awards and recognitions that were nothing more than a road map that led them back to where they were now.   
  
Just before Jim started to leave the bedroom, McCoy pulled on his shirt bringing the younger man back to him. His fingers ran over the oldest award on the other man’s chest. The touch saying more than his words could, but he offered them too. “He would have been proud of you.” Although they both knew he was saying that McCoy was proud of him. Jim didn’t say anything; there was nothing he could say – not with words. Instead he leaned forward and met half way for a quick kiss.  
  
Once they appeared to be the respectable and well-put together officers that Starfleet expected them to be, it was off to meet Admiral Pike and Commander Kirk for a light breakfast. Not that Jim was going to eat anything, but that wasn’t a battle McCoy felt like waging this morning.   
  
Breakfast was a quiet affair. Few words were spoken between them, but the silence was not suffocating. If anything it was more a requiem for everything this day was and soon what it would become.   
  
Too soon there was nothing more to delay them and they were expected for their pre-ceremony meeting with public relations. It might have been annoying if it all didn’t feel like an old hat at this point. McCoy had even started to joke with the officer, if only to get Jim to laugh again, which seemed to break the last of the remaining tension Jim was carrying this morning as he tried to keep his emotions in check.  
  
Despite any misgivings either of them might have had, Jim was a sight to behold as he was ushered up to the podium to share his remarks. He had never claimed to be a great orator, but he didn’t need fancy words to win over people. The fact that he cared and remembered who they were was enough for people to love him. Today would be no different.   
  
“A lot of people look at a ship and they see the hull plating, the integrate design, and all the work that physically takes to build her and keep her in one piece that way.” This was not the speech he intended to make this morning, but as he approached the podium and looked over at the crowd there – seeing all of his friends, really his family, he found better words.   
  
“When I look at Enterprise I have never seen an object. I have always seen a home.” Something he had never had or even knew he wanted until he sat down in that captain’s chair and fully understood what it meant. “I see the emergency plating that Commander Scott installed despite not having the materials to do so. I see a young Lieutenant Sulu and Ensign Chekov – now a Captain and Lieutenant Commander in their own right, at the helm getting us out of all sorts of improbable situations. I see Doctor McCoy and Nurse Chapel ruling over the sickbay and really the entire ship.”  
  
And they were all there – his crew. The years had been kind to most of them, growing into something extraordinary that he had seen first planted. These men and women were his children in a ways. They were certainly far more his kin than David Marcus, who despite his mother’s protest and annoyance was standing off to the side looking up at him with a sort of awe.   
  
“I have always looked at a ship and saw the people who keep her working. Their love and commitment is what keeps her afloat.” He paused to clear his throat, certainly not to blink away the tears that were threatening to come this moment. “Enterprise has had a long history. She was christened by fire along with her crew. She has been to the edge and back. There have been tragedies, but also great triumphs. When people hundreds of years from now look back at her history I hope it is one that inspires and launches a new generation to further explore the stars. I wish for this generation, the same thing I wish for the men and women I am proud to serve with today. I simply wish for a never sated sense of curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, and the ability to love what they do.”   
  
“I have never believed in a no win scenario. Today might mark the end of a great vessel, but in her passing others will rise to fill her role. New men and women will stand on the edge and not hesitate. And I wish them all long fulfilling careers and lives. Or in the words of a dear friend and best first officer I had the privilege of working with ‘live long and prosper.’”   
  
The cameras flashed then with a new found ferocity. Jim could feel his resolve failing and while he might have wanted to cry he did not want to do it for the consumption of the masses. As the polite applause quieted, Jim felt a strong steady presence at his side. Bones. He knew that without looking.  
  
“Come on,” Bones said so close to Jim that no one else could overhear, “It might be your party, but I don’t think you should cry, even if you want to in front of the wolves.”  
  
A gentle smile fell across Jim’s face as he allowed himself to be escorted back to his seat with Bones at his side their hands casually intertwined. As he became aware of that gentle weight grounding him, he knew that pictures of this would be all of the news feeds tomorrow. Despite the speech and the importance of what was happening, there was something just a little bit more titillating about the relationship between the two handsome and decorated Starfleet officers – especially for all had they tried to keeo quiet about the whole affair to the general public.   
  
The world didn’t know the half of it, but Jim and McCoy were happy to keep it that way. From now on this would always be theirs to hold and to cherish no matter what the world threw at them. The problem the first time was it wasn’t clear where the lines were drawn, but in the years apart there had been time to grow up and to finally finish baking.   
  
The only issue left to be resolved was the setting of the next chapter of their lives.  
  
A few days later, as they lay in their bed it was McCoy who once more broached the subject first. “You want to go back up there.” And it wasn’t a just question in the same way the remark about the rings wasn’t a question three months ago. It could have been easy to not discuss it, to not mention how at home McCoy had been feeling the past couple of months while he watched Jim squirm and search for something to sate him. And he could have made all sorts of excuses like he did with Jocelyn, but McCoy had been down that road too many times before.  
  
“I do,” he said. In that moment Jim sounded more like that five year old kid who looked up at the sky in wonder as to what that darkness could hold rather than the man who has spent over fifteen years seeing first hand what was out there.  
  
“So what’s keeping you?” McCoy asked the question because he felt like he had to, even if he knew the answer. And Jim knew that too, so he just looked at McCoy for a long moment every secret he tried to keep so clear in his too bright eyes.  
  
“The same thing that kept you in space for so long.”  
  
McCoy turned to fully face Jim. “You know I didn’t go to or stay up there just for you, ass.”   
  
Jim smiled at the wild eyebrow and ran his fingers over its lines to sooth it. He allowed the space of a few exhales between them, gaze not moving away from Bones.   
  
“You always think you’re going to have more time,” Jim started, his voice gentle, “but that’s not the case with the lives that we live. I’ve had some great adventures out in the black,” Jim shifted away from McCoy so he was seated up right, “but now I’m ready to try out some down here too, with you, if you’ll have me.”   
  
The uncertainty was clear in McCoy’s expression. “You wouldn’t be happy with some desk job down here.”  
  
Jim smiled slow, clearly the opening he was looking for. “Well, apparently some crazy doctor created a brilliant new training program that is working for the medical officers and the Academy wants to try something similar for Command students, because we can’t have our doctors knowing more than the people running the ship.”  
  
If there were at any other time, McCoy might have grumbled muttered something about the benefit of medical having a constant edge over the over zealous idiots in command, but this wasn’t that sort of moment.   
  
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”  
  
“It’s not exactly like you have a desk job, Bones. Normally you’re out in the black half the year. Besides the best part about being the captain isn’t the thrilling heroics, it was watching everyone reach their potentials and then working with them to go past them. Imagine if I could start doing that sooner – the universe wouldn’t know what hit her.”  
  
McCoy studied Jim for a long moment, seeing the clear excitement in his eyes and for the first time able to really define that restlessness he had seen. Jim was taking the next step and unlike all the other ones he took he needed to know this was the right path to start down.   
  
Rather than find some stupid words to say, McCoy smiled at Jim pulling the younger man closer to him. “Fine, but if we’re staying here for a while longer I want a better mattress,” he said before pulling Jim into a kiss. 

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit's due/references: This story took on a number of different forms in the process of writing it. There are a number of scenes that had to be cut in order to keep with the flow of things in the final timeline. The story has influences in the episode "Out of Gas" from Firefly in the way that time works. Angel One and some of the information about it, what taken from the Memory Alpha entry on it (along with the DS9 episode) with some liberties being made about the details. Beyond that the story was originally inspired by an album of which it shares the same name - Broken Folk by Brian Webb. All of the section chapters are lyrics from the album and some of his lyrics show up paraphrased as dialogue too. However, this story moved away from the story the album tells as the drafts went on. And of course, Roddenberry created it, I play in it because fair use is awesome.


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